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Business plan of CHANNEL YOUNG
GUO Yu
HU Mingyue
LI Li
MA Xuewei
A Project
Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
MSocSc in Media Management
Supervisor: Dr. Michael YOUNG
School of Communication and School of Business
Hong Kong Baptist University
Hong Kong
May 2012
1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .............................................................................................................. 4
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................................. 5
PART I
BUSINESS INTRODUCTION OF CHANNEL YOUNG
AND EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS ....................................................................... 7
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 8
1.1 Company Description .......................................................................................................... 8
1.1.1 Business Range ........................................................................................................ 8
1.1.2 Website Function .................................................................................................... 10
1.1.3 Offline activity ....................................................................................................... 10
1.2 Company Culture .............................................................................................................. 11
2. External environment analysis .................................................................................................... 12
2.1 PEST analysis .................................................................................................................... 12
2.1.1Political analysis ...................................................................................................... 13
2.1.2 Economic analysis .................................................................................................. 13
2.1.3 Social-cultural analysis........................................................................................... 14
2.1.4 Technological analysis............................................................................................ 15
2.1.5 Summary of Pest Analysis ...................................................................................... 16
2.2 Five Forces Analysis ......................................................................................................... 17
2.2.1 The Threat of New Entrants: relatively high ................................................... 17
2.2.2 The Bargaining Power of Buyers: medium ..................................................... 18
2.2.3 The Bargaining Power of Suppliers: medium ................................................. 19
2.2.4 The Threat of Substitute Products and Services: relatively low ...................... 19
2.2.5 The Intensity of Rivalry among Competitors in an Industry: low ................... 20
2.2.6 Attractiveness Evaluation ....................................................................................... 20
2.3 Task Environment Analysis ............................................................................................... 22
2.3.1 Customer Analysis .................................................................................................. 22
2.3.2 Competitor Analysis ............................................................................................... 24
3. SWOT Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 31
3.1 Strengths ............................................................................................................................ 31
3.1.1 First Mover Advantage ........................................................................................... 31
3.1.2 Media Innovation Advantage ................................................................................. 32
3.1.3 Human Resource Advantage .................................................................................. 32
3.1.4 Flexibility Advantage ............................................................................................. 33
3.2 Weaknesses ........................................................................................................................ 33
3.2.1 Credibility Weakness .............................................................................................. 33
3.2.2 Capital Weakness.................................................................................................... 33
3.2.3 Relationship Weakness ........................................................................................... 33
3.3 Opportunities ..................................................................................................................... 34
3.3.1 Demands Opportunity ............................................................................................ 34
3.3.2 Technology Opportunity ......................................................................................... 34
3.3.3 Politics Opportunity ............................................................................................... 34
3.4 Threats ............................................................................................................................... 35
2
3.4.1 Substitutes Threat ................................................................................................... 35
3.4.2 New Entrance Threat .............................................................................................. 35
3.4.3 Fast Technology Updating ...................................................................................... 35
PART II
MARKET RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY .................................................................... 37
1. Methodology and Objectives ...................................................................................................... 38
2 Qualitative Approach, Objectives and Findings ........................................................................... 38
2.1 Objectives of Qualitative Approach .................................................................................. 39
2.1.1 Objectives of focus group 1: professionals in e-commerce field ........................... 39
2.1.2 Objectives of focus group 2: professionals in performing arts field ...................... 39
2.1.3 Objectives of focus group 3: performing arts students ........................................... 39
2.2 Research findings of Qualitative Approach ....................................................................... 40
2.2.1 Findings from the e-commerce professionals’ interviews ...................................... 40
2.2.2 Findings from the Artist Agency professionals’ interviews .................................... 41
2.2.3 Findings from the performing arts students ............................................................ 42
3. Quantitative Approach, Objectives and Findings ........................................................................ 43
3.1 Objectives of Quantitative Approach ................................................................................ 43
3.2 Research Findings of Quantitative Approach .................................................................... 44
3.2.1 Research findings on part 1: User’s general use habits of the internet ................... 44
3.2.2 Research findings on part 2: User’s use habit of certain websites which have some
relevance to our website .................................................................................................. 47
3.2.3 Research findings on part 3: What services users want us to provide .................... 52
4. Summary of research findings ..................................................................................................... 58
5. Limitations of research findings .................................................................................................. 59
PART III
BUSINESS PLAN FOR CHANNEL YONG IN MAINLAND CHINA .................................... 60
1. Company Design ......................................................................................................................... 61
1.1 Organization Structure ...................................................................................................... 61
1.1.1 Duties of Administrative Department ..................................................................... 61
1.1.2 Duties of Financial Department........................................................................... 62
1.1.3 Duties of Executive Department ......................................................................... 62
1.1.4 Duties of Technical Department .......................................................................... 62
1.2 Human resources management .......................................................................................... 62
1.2.1 Team Member ......................................................................................................... 62
1.2.2 Human Resource Management .............................................................................. 63
1.2.3 HR Recruitment ...................................................................................................... 63
1.2.4 HR Training ............................................................................................................ 64
2. Strategic Management ................................................................................................................. 66
2.1 Corporate level strategy .................................................................................................... 66
2.1.1 Vision ..................................................................................................................... 66
2.1.2 Mission ................................................................................................................... 66
2.1.3 Long-term objective ............................................................................................... 67
2.1.4 Short-term objectives ............................................................................................. 67
2.2 Business level strategy ...................................................................................................... 67
3
2.2.1 Grasp and fill the market vacancy .......................................................................... 69
2.2.2 Content construction comes to the first priority of our task ................................... 70
2.2.3 Comprehensive promotion at a later period ........................................................... 71
2.3 Profit Model ...................................................................................................................... 71
2.3.1 No. one profit point: advertising ............................................................................ 71
2.3.2 No. two profit point: membership fee .................................................................... 72
2.3.3 No. three profit point: training ............................................................................... 72
2.3.4 No. four profit point: internship ............................................................................. 72
2.3.5 No. five profit point: recruitment commission ....................................................... 73
2.3.6 No. six profit point: value-added service ............................................................... 73
2.3.7 Profit composition plan in three development stages ............................................. 73
2.4 Implementation of strategy ................................................................................................ 74
2.4.1 Company development stage analysis .................................................................... 74
2.5 Marketing and Sales Strategy ............................................................................................ 83
2.5.1 Market Mix (4 Ps) .................................................................................................. 83
2.6 Risk Management Strategies ............................................................................................. 90
2.6.1 Capacity of the market ........................................................................................... 90
2.6.2 How to break the existing stable industry chain is a challenge for us. ................... 90
2.6.3 Risk of breaking contract unilaterally .................................................................... 91
2.6.4 Cooperation construction and Quality control over the user-generated contents ... 91
3. Financial Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 92
3.1 Financial Budget Management .......................................................................................... 92
3.1.1 Assumption ............................................................................................................. 92
3.2 Key Financial Data ............................................................................................................ 93
3.3 Financing Plan ................................................................................................................... 97
3.4 Financial Evaluation .......................................................................................................... 98
3.4.1 IRR ......................................................................................................................... 99
3.4.2 Payback Period ....................................................................................................... 99
3.4.3 NPV ...................................................................................................................... 100
3.4.4 Rate of Return on Investment ............................................................................... 100
4. Exit Plan .................................................................................................................................... 101
4.1 Exit strategies on business recession ............................................................................... 101
4.1.1 Go Public .............................................................................................................. 101
4.1.2 Management Buy-out ........................................................................................... 102
4.1.3 Business Transformation ...................................................................................... 102
4.1.4 Dissolution and Liquidation ................................................................................. 102
4.2 Exit strategy on business maturity—Merger ................................................................... 103
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 104
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 107
APPENDIXES ............................................................................................................................. 108
4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This project would not have been completed if we had not received support from
some parties.
We are most grateful to our project supervisors, Dr. Michael Young and Prof. Gerard
Prendergast, for their valuable assistance and patience in providing guidance. Their
support and opinions have helped us a lot in solving problems, finding new
perspectives and make our written work clear and in order.
We appreciate the kind help from our 9 participants in the focus group interviews to
give us suggestions and in-depth ideas on our Channel Young Business plan.
Furthermore, we feel an immense gratitude to our 10 friends who helped us to do the
questionnaire trial, so that we can modify and improve the questionnaire according to
their feedbacks. In addition, we also want to express our sincere thanks to all our
respondents for their kindness in completing the questionnaires, so that we can collect
the valuable data to help us design our company.
Students’ Names: __________________________________________________
Signatures:
_________________________________________________________________
M.A. in Communication
School of Communication
Hong Kong Baptist University
Date: ____________________________
5
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In this project, we developed a business plan for establishing a new company aiming
at offering communication platforms through a website for performing art talents in
China. The main services are to provide customers with job or internship
opportunities, trainings and experience sharing, and more importantly, a platform to
have direct communication with enterprises and celebrities in art performing industry.
One of our unique characteristics is we introduced E-commerce to our business as
means of payments to make the business transactions more convenient and reliable,
by doing this, cost of users has also decreased because fewer middlemen existing in
the whole job-seeking process . Another creative point of us is we introduced more
services like training, internship opportunities, communication platforms and offline
activities into our business, which made our function more than just an ordinary
e-commerce platform or a job broker in general sense.
To make our idea feasible, we have tried to find what is the external environment of
China can give us a chance to develop, whether there is any market vacancy in art
performing industry, what can we do to be differentiated, how to ensure our
first-mover advantage and how to establish and how to promote our company in the
real life.
As to the methodology part, we chose both qualitative method and quantitative
method to help our analysis. The qualitative approach is used to help us find
6
directions of thinking, learn more experiences from the industry professionals and ask
for their valuable suggestions. The quantitative approach is used to make evaluations
on our potential market and the demands of our potential users, so that we can make
sure what they really need.
In addition, other resources and data used in this project are mainly collected from the
following methods: second-hand material from related reports and document on line
or off line; first hand material from questionnaire and interview; and a real performing
arts brokerage business run by one of our members in the past few years.
7
PART I
BUSINESS INTRODUCTION OF CHANNEL YOUNG
AND EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
8
1. Introduction
The company we intend to establish is a website named as Channel Young. This name
indicates that it is a channel for the growth and development of the young performing
arts. To make this idea vivid, we will do a brief company description and introduce
our company culture first to let you form an outline in your mind.
1.1 Company Description
1.1.1 Business Range
Channel Young is a new business model which trying to satisfy various commercial
performance demands through e-commerce platform. To be Specific, when the
enterprises and the performing artists get agreements on our website, then, the
enterprises should pay the wages first through our e-commerce platform; this sum of
money will be kept by us temporarily and we will pay it to the performing artists after
they successfully perform the shows. Of course, we will take some commissions.
Channel Young is not only playing a role as a middleman between individuals and
enterprises, but also a career guide for young people who have desires to become
professional artists.
9
For individual users, we will provide training courses online and study tours or pay
internships to famous enterprises offline, therefore, apart from job opportunities, they
will also get opportunities like diversified career plan training, personal show
platform and social communication platform just like other social media to help
individual users better prepare for their long-term career development.
For enterprise users, not only qualified performing art talents, but also marketing
opportunities can be found on our website. Advertisers can not only publish common
advertisements on our website, by shooting training videos, opening blogs and micro
blogs for celebrities or professionals in their companies on our website and
cooperating us to held various online activities, enterprisers can better build up their
sustainable professional image.
Besides online services, we will also conduct offline activities like talent shows,
professional speeches, artist competitions and paid internship opportunities, these will
satisfy more needs of our customers and create more direct communication
opportunities between the enterprises and performing art talents. Moreover, by
cooperating us to held diversified offline activities, companies can also get good
advertising chance to promote themselves among all participants and to attract
attention of the mass media. Our website is uncertainly a promotional platform for all
offline activities.
10
To make our business more clear, we will describe our website functions and offline
activities in detailed next.
1.1.2 Website Function
release of
recruitment
demand
personalized
display
platform
communication
platform
career
training
advertising
other value-
added
services
target
customer
mainly for
enterprise users
both for individual
and enterprise
users
both for individual
and enterprise users
mainly for
individual users
mainly for
enterprise
users
both for
individual and
enterprise users
function
overview
companies who
need artists for
commercial
performances
can release
recruitment
information on
our website
users can build up
their own spaces
and upload
articles, photos
and vedios on our
website
users can
communicate
through micro blogs,
forums and online
chatting room on
our website
art knowledge
database will be
establithed
trough both
users and
editors to
provide
individual users
with training
materials, we
will also invite
famous artists,
experts and
professionals to
shoot training
videos on our
website
companies can
do
advertisements
on our
platform, and
we can provide
onlie marketing
plan according
to our website
functions
we will provide
users with
personal space
design and
other online
applications
charge information fee
membership fee is
required for
individual users,
and it's free for
enterprise users
free
parts of
materials are
provided with
charge
advertising feeadditional
servive fee
The rendering pictures of each item can be found in the Appendix 1 to Appendix 6.
1.1.3 Offline activity
After we developed into a mature stage, we will provide offline paid services for
customers.
For individual customers, we will organize professional seminars, expert speeches,
11
company visits and internships for them to improve themselves and to help them do
career plan.
For companies, we will provide them with marketing opportunities like naming right
and targeted propaganda. We will also organize performing artist competitions to help
companies find proper employees, and this will also help individual customers to
show their talents.
1.2 Company Culture
Our network devotes to creating a job searching and communication platform for
university or college students who have artistic talents. We put innovation as our first
priority and supplemented by finding and learning.
For individuals
Here, everyone could show talents and communicate with like-minded friends freely.
Here, everyone could find opportunity for future career and get close to know more
successful professionals.
Here, everyone could learn what could not be taught at school.
For companies
Here, can be a bridge for your future business.
12
Here, can be the best place to find your desirable employees.
Here, can be the most suitable method to enrich your company’s viability.
2. External environment analysis
Before coming up the most suitable strategy for Channel Young, we will analyze the
external environment to minimize or eliminate threats and exploit opportunities. We
identified three types of environments: the general environment, the competitive
environment and the task environment. These activities will provide valuable inputs
for developing forecasts. A sound awareness of these factors, both individually and in
combination, is beneficial not only for deciding whether this country and industry is
promising to enter but also for assessing how to improve our competitive position.
2.1 PEST analysis
PEST analysis is used to analyze the general environment in China. Through this
analysis, we want to be aware of what is going on outside our company, and discover
whether Channel Young should go to the China market or not. Following is the
detailed analysis from the political, economic, social cultural and technological
segments; they are all factors that usually beyond our control but the trends and events
occurring in these segments can have dramatic effects on our company, so we should
be aware of them.
13
2.1.1Political analysis
Policy encouragement for culture industry development in mainland China.
With the robust economic growth, the Chinese government focuses and invests more
on the cultural development. On one hand, it uses fiscal and taxation system to
leverage the financial spending and regulate the expenditure structure. On the other, it
issues some relevant laws and regulations to support the development of cultural
industries.
Policy encouragement for university graduates to start their own business.
Furthermore, in order to generate more creative ideas, cultivate and keep talents and
create more job opportunities, the central government encourages the Young graduates
to start their own enterprises. From government policy, tax policy to business startup
loans and business administration, the graduates can enjoy more favorable policy
preferences.
Therefore, we can get policy advantages if starting a new business.
2.1.2 Economic analysis
Chinese market is a continuous growing market.
In the year 2011, the GDP growth rate of China account for 9.2%, which means
China’s economy being strong and stable. For one thing, it provides the emerging
14
enterprises more space to grow and development; on the other, the general public
looks for more spiritual satisfactions.
The trend of economic transform from export-orientation to domestic-orientation.
After the financial crisis, the Chinese government took steps to transform the
economic development model from export-orientation to domestic-demand
orientation. It takes a lot of effort to stimulate domestic demand, which creates a good
opportunity for the growing cultural industry. By making full use of the stimulate
consumption policy, this kind of industry could occupy a bigger market share.
Recent years, China continues to enjoy a solid consumer confidence. Generally, its
CCI accounts for a figure of from 100 to110. And in the contemporary society, people
have a growing mental and cultural demand and want a higher living standard.
Generally, this situation breeds an opportunity for cultural industry.
2.1.3 Social-cultural analysis
The 80s generation is more willing to show themselves.
In China, the generations after 1980s are becoming the pillars of the society step by
step. One important characteristic of these young people when compared with their
elder generations is that they are more willing to accept new ideas, try new ways and
have a more open consumption conception. Usually, as the only child in the family,
15
they want to be noticed, and more importantly, recognized.
More Chinese students are seeking for part-time jobs and opportunities to prepare
themselves for future career development.
Nowadays, in campus, large quantities of students want to find part-time job
opportunities to practice themselves as well as make money. Out of the campus, many
performing artists also want to find job opportunities in their spare time to develop a
higher career life as well as make more money. Moreover, with the talents
competition becoming fiercer, students now have more and more realized the
importance to prepare themselves earlier for good job opportunities and long-term
career plan.
All in all, business targeting at these young people will embrace a brighter future. And
those changes in the cultural segment will also give us more chances to be creative
and to get more profit points.
2.1.4 Technological analysis
The growing number of Internet users in China.
In recent years, the world has witnessed a significant development in technology in
China. By the end of December 2011, the number of Internet users has grown to 513
million at a rate of 38.3%. This trend has heralded the arrival of the Internet age.
16
The rapid growth of e-commerce in mainland China in recent years.
As Internet is the future direction, the e-commence businesses usher its golden period
of development. It has been applied into many industries appropriately and it works
very well. For instance, in the clothing industry, there is VANCAL.COM. In the
electric business, there is 360BUY.COM. In the luxury industry, there is
VIPKU.COM. In the cosmetic business, there is JUMEI.COM.
In brief, in the Performing Arts industry, it is very likely to introduce this new kind of
online transaction model. We are just taking the trend to make use of the technology
growth opportunities.
2.1.5 Summary of Pest Analysis
To conclude, Channel Young gets benefit from government’s policy of encouraging
the development of cultural industry, and the growing economy and GDP per capita in
China will also provides a healthy economic environment. In addition, performing
artists show a strong will in finding performing opportunities, so Channel Young will
offer them platforms to have direct communications with enterprises. At last,
e-commence has developed into a mature stage which makes introduce this
technology into the performing arts industry more practical and reliable. To sum up,
China is a good market to enter and it also shows great potential.
17
2.2 Five Forces Analysis
The second part we must consider is the industry environment or competitive
environment. Porter’s Five-Forces Model will be utilized in this part to determine the
competitive intensity and the market attractiveness in performing arts industry. The
following analyses are going to answer the questions: 1) Do we have fierce
competition in this industry? 2) Do we have a seller or buyer market? 3) What is the
behavior of major suppliers to this industry? 4) Can new competitors enter this
industry easily? 5) For the major product in this industry, are there any substitute
products?
2.2.1 The Threat of New Entrants: relatively high
The threat of new entrants refers to the possibility that the profits of established firms
in the industry may be eroded by new competitors. The extent of threat depends on
existing barriers to entry and the combined reactions from existing competitors.
On one hand, with the Chinese economic reform, setting up a new company is no
longer a hard thing. Meanwhile, among all the cities in China, Shenzhen, as one of the
Special Economy Zones, can be the best place to build up new business because of
some favorable terms. Therefore, the entrant barriers are relatively low in whole
Chinese market. On the other hand, as for the Art industry, it is not essential to invest
large financial resources to compete. And, most art companies are not specialized and
18
do not have strong brand identification and customer loyalty. From these two aspects,
the threat of new entrants is high.
However, we want point out that we are the first company to set up the buyer-to-buyer
e-commerce website for all students who want to show themselves. Therefore, with
the first-mover advantage, we can get high user loyalty, which could decrease the
threat of new entrants to some degree. Combining all these aspects, the threat of new
entrants is not that high.
2.2.2 The Bargaining Power of Buyers: medium
Buyers threaten an industry by forcing down prices, bargaining for higher quality or
more services, and playing competitors against each other. These actions may erode
industry profitability.
The buyers in the performing art industry are divided into 3 groups. They are
individual customers, small and middle-sized companies and some big companies.
The power of individuals and small and middle-sized companies is relatively low
because the products from this industry are differentiated and nonstandard. Most artist
management companies earn high profits from them. What’s more, the market can not
satisfy their needs. Therefore, their bargaining power is low. However, for some big
companies, their high reputation and powerful influence and capital make their
19
bargaining power very strong. On the whole, the bargaining power of buyers is
medium.
2.2.3 The Bargaining Power of Suppliers: medium
Suppliers can exert bargaining power by threatening to raise price or reduce the
quality of goods and service. Actually, in the art industry, the buyer is also the supplier.
Therefore, the bargaining power of suppliers is the same as Buyers.
2.2.4 The Threat of Substitute Products and Services: relatively low
The threat of substitute is the threat of limiting the potential returns of an industry by
placing a ceiling on the prices that firm in that industry can profitably charge without
losing too many customers to substitute products. The substitute products involves
searching for other products or services that can perform the same function as the
industry’s offerings.
In the Chinese Market, there are three main companies which perform the same
function. They are “51 Job”, “Madou.com” and “Yifeng Artist Management
Company”. All these three companies have the art performing services and could be
our company’s substitute. But, actually, they are just using traditional business model
without buyer to buyer e-commerce business. Therefore, we would like to define the
threat of substitute as the medium to relatively low level.
20
2.2.5 The Intensity of Rivalry among Competitors in an Industry: low
The intensity of rivalry among competitors in an industry is the threat that customers
will switch their business to the competitors within the industry.
As for the art industry, the intensity of rivalry among competitors is relatively low.
The reasons are as follows. First of all, there are small numbers of art performing
companies in China. Secondly, we do not have direct competitor in China market
because that no buyer-to-buyer e-commerce model has been used in art performing
industry in China. Thirdly, art performing industry does not have high fixed cost,
which doesn’t create too much pressure for those firms. Last but not least, companies
in art industry do not need to face high exit barriers, like specialized assets, fixed
costs of exit, government pressures. Mover, by targeting the brokerage business unit,
which is usually a small pat of those traditional performing arts companies, and by
creating a new business model, we can be differentiated with them. Therefore, we
think the intensity of rivalry among competitors is low.
2.2.6 Attractiveness Evaluation
Attractiveness refers to the overall industry profitability. We will use 0 to 7 score to
evaluate the performing art industry in every forces. Then, getting a score out of the
total 35 points to see whether the prospect of performing art industry is attractive or
not. According to the above analysis, each force can get a score as follows.
21
The Threat of New Entrants: relatively high
Attractiveness score:
7 3 1
The Bargaining Power of Buyers: medium
Attractiveness Score:
7 4 1
The Bargaining Power of Suppliers: medium
Attractiveness Score:
7 4 1
The Threat of Substitute Products and Services: relatively low
Attractiveness Score:
7 5 1
The Intensity of Rivalry among Competitors in an Industry: low
Attractiveness Score:
7 6 1
Total Score: 22/35
22
Therefore, the threat we need to pay attention to is the new entrant. How to keep our
first mover advantage in the future is a very important problem we need to face. And
the advantageous factor that we have in the art performing industry is the low
intensive competition among competitors. Moreover, the total score of the industry is
22 out of 35, which indicates that art performing industry has a relatively good
prospect and we can set up our business in a relatively good industry environment.
2.3 Task Environment Analysis
Task environment is the one unique to our specific firm, which will not be applicable
for another firm. The task environment analysis has two parts: Customer analysis and
competitor analysis. The main reason to conduct our task environment analysis is to
know the following questions: 1) who are the firm’s main customers? What are their
behaviors? 2) Who is my major competitor? What are the resources and behaviors of
this firm? 3) Who is my key supplier?
2.3.1 Customer Analysis
Our target customers are divided into three groups of people.
Customer Main Customer Unique Characteristics
Individual customer University and college
students
Don’t care too much about the money
Long for opportunities
23
15 to 25 years old Desire of sharing and showing
Have strong social network using habit
Advertising company Advertising companies with
performing arts business
Money-oriented
Other enterprises All kinds of companies
except for such above
advertising company
Owns performing opportunities
Demand of performing artists to perform
shows regularly or temporarily
2.3.1.1 Individual customers
In the initial stage of our company, university and college students between 15 to 25
years old are our target customers. According to estimation, the total number of our
target customer reaches nearly 30 million in China market at present, which shows a
big potential market for our business. For this group of people, they mainly have four
unique characteristics. Firstly, they usually don’t care too much about the money
because of the financial support from their family. Secondly, they long for good
opportunity which can benefit their future job seeking, such as opportunity from big
or famous enterprises. Thirdly, they have strong desire in sharing experiences and
enjoy self-presentation. Last not least, they have strong social network using habit,
which is very crucial for our e-business.
2.3.1.2 Advertising Company
The second group of our target customer is the advertising companies in China. On
24
one hand, they are our competitors in terms of doing the same business. On the other
hand, they also can be our target customers by using our strong social network
website to do business. One unique characteristics of this group is they are
money-oriented. These advertising companies’ purpose is making money or making
more money by using our services. They want to find useful sources in our network to
help them to do further business
2.3.1.3 Other enterprises
Other enterprises are the last group of our target customer. They can be all kinds of
companies, small or big, except for such above advertising company. If they want to
find some wide-range creative videos, talent ideas and performing artists, our social
network can be a good choice for them. For these enterprises, they mainly have the
following characteristics. First of all, they have many performing opportunities. They
may come from the needs for some celebrations or just being their routine jobs.
Therefore, they have strong demands of performing artists to perform shows for them
regularly or temporarily.
2.3.2 Competitor Analysis
Our competitors can be classified into two groups, online competitor and below-line
competitor. Nowadays, e-commerce website is becoming more and more popular with
the prosperous of Internet. However, it has not been used in traditional performing
25
arts companies. Therefore, our company will be the first to introduce a new business
model, E-commerce, into this industry by setting up a specialized E-commerce
website for performing artists. Following is the comparison between our website and
our competitors.
2.3.2.1 Online competitor
From our company, the online competitors on line are Madouku.com and 51 JOB.
Madouku.com 51 JOB Channel Young
Position The largest part-time
model or artist
showing and
communication
platform
Professional human
resource service
agencies
Specialized
communication and
job-searching
platform for young
performing artists
Profit
Source
Advertising,
Membership fee
Advertising，career
training and
assessment,
membership fee, HR
outsourcing and
consulting services
Advertising,
Membership fee,
Training fee,
Internship,
Recruitment
commission,
Value-added
service
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Targeting
customers
Amateurish models
and talent artists
All people who are
seeking jobs
Young performing
artists
Strength Professional artists’
management team.
1000 registered
photographer and
more than 15000
models
Advanced web
technology and
experienced expertise
Large numbers of
loyalty users
Good financial
situation
Specialized in art
performing field.
Providing richer
career development
services for users.
New business
model of
E-commerce
Targeting young
university students,
easier to get
high-quality
user-generated
contents
Weakness No formal job
seeking services
Just a communication
and showing platform
Targeting those
relative low-educated
Not specialized in art
performing job
business.
No e-commerce
service
New business
without direct
experiences
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groups, lack of
high-quality
user-generated
contents
Unique
Behavior
Aggressive in
performing art
business.
Not aggressive in
performing art
business
Aggressive in
performing art
business.
Madouku.com was founded by “Hangzhou Footprint Network Limited Company” in
January 2010. It is the largest part-time model and artist showing and communication
platform, which targets at amateurish models and talent artists. The source of profit
comes from advertising and membership fee. Madouku has two unique strengths. One
is that it has a professional artist management team. The other is that nearly 1000
photographers and 15000 models have registered in their website. However, it
weakness is obvious. It is just a communication and showing platform without formal
job seeking services. For Madouku.com, they are performing an aggressive behavior
in art performing business.
51JOBS is a leading human resource solutions provider in China, offering a broad
array of services in the areas of recruitment solutions, training and assessment, and
HR outsourcing and consulting services. Combining the strengths of traditional (print)
and new (Internet) media, 51JOBS delivers an integrated recruitment solution by
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leveraging technology and experienced expertise. Meanwhile, it is the most influential
HR services provider in China with strong customer loyalty. And in 2011, the income
of 51JOBS reached RMB 1.37 billion and the profit is RMB 390 million, which
demonstrated a good financial situation. However, 51JOBS has no e-commerce
service and is not specialized in art performing job-seeking business, so we do not
need to compete with 51JOBS directly.
From the above analysis, though our competitors are mature and successful in their
business, they do have some weaknesses which leave us a market vacancy. For
example, Madouku.com is targeting at a relative low-educated group and lacks job
brokerage functions; and 51.job is targeting everyone who wants to find a job and not
specific in any industries. Therefore, our company will use niche marketing strategy
to enter this blank part of the market so that we can avoid direct competition with
these strong competitors in the market. We will build a specialized communication
and job-searching platform for young performing artists with the new business model
of E-commerce in order to get the competitive strength.
2.3.2.2 Off-line competitor
Off-line competitors
Shenzhen Yi Feng Enterprise Image
Planning Company
Channel Young
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Shenzhen South Arts Group
Guangzhou Ye volunteers
advertising Co., LTD
Position Second-level art performing
companies in Shenzhen
Specialized communication and
job-searching online platform for
young performing artists
Source of
Profit
Agency fee Advertising
Membership and training fee
Internship opportunities
Recruitment commission
Value-added service
Targeting
customers
Low-end artists and models Young performing artists
Strength Immediately service
Directly face-to-face communication
Low membership fee
Low Recruitment commission
Direct communication between
performing artists and companies
New business model of E-commerce
Large amount of Job information
Weakness High agency fee
Limited Information
Outdate business model
Low membership fee
Low Recruitment commission
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The traditional performing companies are not only our consumer, but also are our
competitors. We will set up our company in Shenzhen at the beginning. Therefore,
there are three traditional performing art companies could be our below-line
competitors. They are Shenzhen Yi Feng Enterprise Image Planning Company
Limited, Shenzhen South Arts Group and Guangzhou Ye volunteers advertising Co.,
LTD. However, all these three companies are nearly in the same position and share
some similarities. So, we will analyze them as a whole.
For the off-line competitors in Shenzhen market, agency fee are their main source of
profit. And usually, their target customers are some low-end artists and models. They
indeed have some strength, such as immediately service and directly face-to-face
communication. However, the weakness of them is overweighed because of high
agency fee, limited information and outdated business levels. Even though those
companies are aggressive in art performing business, they still not that competitive for
us because on-line platform is our main business. Besides, all these companies are not
very famous. And performing arts brokerage business is only a small part of their
business, so they won’t pay much attention to this part to guarantee its high quality.
From the above analysis, we can find that our business has outstanding advantages
compare with those off-line competitors. For example, besides low membership fee
and commission fee, our company has more profit sources and more art-related job
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information. Moreover, all those art talents could directly communicate with some
professionals and employing units. Those characteristics will make us different from
those off-line competitors. At last, since Shenzhen does not own any very famous
performing art companies, it is our opportunity to start from Shenzhen.
In short, from all the task environment analysis, we can see that we have many
competitors and some of them are competitive. However, there is no direct competitor
for us. More importantly, because of our new business model and niche marketing
strategy, our business plan does have some competitive strength to differentiate from
our competitors so that we can enter the market with less pressure.
3. SWOT Analysis
Through SWOT analysis, we aim to provide basis for our strategies. Strengths are the
points we should make best use of, weaknesses are the points we should improve,
opportunities provide us ideas of further development, and threats inform us risk we
should pay attention to avoid.
3.1 Strengths
3.1.1 First Mover Advantage
We are the first company in mainland China to introduce e-commerce model into the
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performing arts industry. Because we are an e-commerce platform which largely relies
on users to produce contents, the number of uses and user loyalty will be critical for
us to keep our first mover advantage. That is to say, once a user has been used to
using our website and has developed his or her relationship network on our website,
it’s not necessary for the users to change to another website with similar functions.
In order to truly build up our first mover advantage, we need to make every effort to
build up our advantages in the following aspects: to attract as many users as possible,
to help users build up their relationship network on our websites, to provide
high-quality contents and services so that users can acquire additional value by using
our website.
3.1.2 Media Innovation Advantage
Being different from traditional e-commerce platform, we are not only a trade and
payment intermediate, but also a stage for our users to show themselves, a course
database for students to learn and a communication platform which can build up
closer relationship among individual users, art experts and entrepreneurs.
3.1.3 Human Resource Advantage
Our core leading members are all master students. As students, we are easier to do
market research among university students. And we know what those students are
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caring about and what they need most.
3.1.4 Flexibility Advantage
As a small company, we have significant flexibility in management. This will help us
encourage more innovations. And our existing cost is also low.
3.2 Weaknesses
3.2.1 Credibility Weakness
As an online platform, we need to pay more effort to guarantee information truth and
money security. We plan to verify information carefully before we publish them and
to cooperate with credible the third party payment platform like Zhifubao.
3.2.2 Capital Weakness
As graduate students, we don’t have enough money to start our business depend on
ourselves. So we plan to invite VC to invest in our program. However, this will
increase our pressure in both budget and management.
3.2.3 Relationship Weakness
Compared with traditional artist intermediate companies in Shenzhen, we don’t have
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enough relationship resource with artist companies, advertising companies and artists.
However, we plan to build up our relationship network from the university students
making use of our status advantage. We also plan to get support of the government
first by meeting the government’s demands to encourage university students to start
their own business and to develop the cultural industry.
3.3 Opportunities
3.3.1 Demands Opportunity
With the increasing marketing awareness of companies, more and more companies
have the need for temporary artist talents.
3.3.2 Technology Opportunity
After several years of rapid development of e-commerce in China, more and more
technologies emerged to guarantee both information and money security.
3.3.3 Politics Opportunity
China’s government now emphasized more on both e-commerce development and
cultural industry development.
35
3.4 Threats
3.4.1 Substitutes Threat
More and more free recruitment websites are helping companies recruit temporary
artists. We should do better job in terms of professionalism and security to win these
competitors.
3.4.2 New Entrance Threat
Because the start cost of our business is low, others can copy our business model in a
easy way. We should pay more attention by user loyalty construction and high quality
content production in the beginning.
3.4.3 Fast Technology Updating
Nowadays, the updating of new technology applied in e-commerce is speeding up.
This requires us to watch out the changing industry to keep the pace with the new
technology trend.
To sum up, we should pay more attention to keep our first mover advantage and
media innovation advantage to protect ourselves from threats from both substitutes
and new entrants. To achieve this goal, innovation has become critical for us.
However, as a small company in the start-up period, we can benefit from our
36
flexibility to try various development methods and to bear certain risk. And we should
keep looking for opportunities coming from demands, policy and technology updating
to peruse sustainable and long-term growth.
37
PART II
MARKET RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY
38
1. Methodology and Objectives
Methodology and data collection are the most important part to gather information
before establishing Channel Young. Here, we use both the qualitative and quantitative
analysis as our research method for evaluation on the following issues:
1). what is existing business structure in the traditional performing arts industry?
2). are there any market vacancy that we can grasp?
3). what is the future developing trend of e-commerce?
4). what difficult we may face in future?
5). what is the potential market of our company?
6). what suggestions the professionals will give us?
7). what is the main concern when performing arts students finding a performing
opportunity?
8). what services our customers want us to provide?
2 Qualitative Approach, Objectives and Findings
Focus group interview is used to investigate the macro environment, to improve our
business model in terms of both feasibility and profitability, and to explore some
partnership probabilities. It also helps us understand how to construct details and
consumer insights through focus group.
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We have totally conducted three kinds of focus groups interviews, which include
professionals in e-commerce field, professionals in performing arts field and
performing arts students. Detailed interviews are in the appendix 7. Following are the
objectives of each focus group.
2.1 Objectives of Qualitative Approach
2.1.1 Objectives of focus group 1: professionals in e-commerce field
The potential of e-commence
The problems have happened in this e-commerce field
In our business model, which part we should pay more attention
How to construct community effectively
Ask for suggestions
2.1.2 Objectives of focus group 2: professionals in performing arts field
The traditional business structure of the performing arts industry
How to cope with breaking contract issues
Ask for suggestions
2.1.3 Objectives of focus group 3: performing arts students
Their attitude towards our company
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Their considerations when choosing a performing job
Ask for suggestions
2.2 Research findings of Qualitative Approach
2.2.1 Findings from the e-commerce professionals’ interviews
Through four interviews with professionals in e-commerce related industry, we can
get several conclusions as follows:
1). E-commerce service is high potential in mainland China in at least five years
because: ①. The potential market in China is huge; ②. The market is now growing at
a high speed; ③. China’s government has submitted series of policies to encourage
the development of e-commerce industry in China.
2). A serious problem which is faced with China’s e-commerce industry is
homogeneous competition. So innovation is critical for any e-commerce members to
achieve breakthrough.
3). In order to build up strong competitiveness in the market, we should pay attention
to innovation, professionalism and localization. And we should make every effort to
accumulate user loyalty, so that we can increase the copy barrier after we entered the
market.
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4). Target youngsters, and take advantage of young users’ creative ideas and active
expressions to build up a dynamic online platform.
5). A good way to make our business model better is to do more service
customizations. Because 7% of super-heavy spenders contribute to 40% of total
online spending, maintains of core customers are very important.
6). In terms of digital marketing, community construction is important. We should
encourage our users to create, to share, because the basic function of the internet is to
empower your consumers. And the website can play a better role if we can enhance
user’ social status both in their feeling and in reality.
2.2.2 Findings from the Artist Agency professionals’ interviews
The traditional Artist Agency is the bridge between the artists and companies. It
provides opportunities for the art workers, and builds certain relationship with some
advertising and public relation companies to be their suppliers. Their operational
model is showed as follows.
The existing structure outline
Enterprise
s
Advertising Companies Entertainment Companies
Middlemen/Acquaintances Artists
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As to the break contract issues, according to their experiences, this ratio is less than
1%. The reason is that once the contract is signed between both sides, they will
consider about their own fame and the long-term cooperation.
2.2.3 Findings from the performing arts students
Performing arts students are one of our main customers. This interview gives us a
clear picture on their attitude towards our company and makes us know more about
their considerations.
After communicating with them, we find that, when students are looking for
performances opportunities, for some, one of their purposes are make money. But for
others, they put more emphasis on the quality of their internships. They want these
experiences will increase their weight when they looking for a job in future. For them,
the working content is more important than the pay. This difference becomes one of
our investigation points in our later questionnaire design.
A brief summary of each focus group interviews (Detailed dialogues can be found
in Appendix 7.)
Focus Group Summary
E-commerce
professionals
1). E-commerce service has high potential in mainland China
2). Beware of homogeneous competition and pay more attention
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to innovation, professionalism, localization and do more service
customizations
3). Targeting at youngsters will help to build up a dynamic
online platform
4). Community construction is important in digital marketing
Artist Agency
professionals
1). There many intermediate links in the traditional performing
arts industry, so if we can eliminate them, we will make profit
2). The ratio of contract- breaking issues is less than 1%
Performing arts
students
1). Many students welcome our ideas
2). The purposes they find performing arts opportunities can be
classified into 2 parts. One is making money; the other is gain
qualified experience which will benefit them get self-promotion.
3. Quantitative Approach, Objectives and Findings
3.1 Objectives of Quantitative Approach
Questionnaire is used to evaluate the market potential and demands accurately. Totally,
we have collected 220 pieces of respondents’ answer from art students in mainland
China. The questionnaire is in Appendix 8.
The questionnaire is composed of three parts, one part stand for one objective. These
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objectives are:
User’s general use habits of the internet
User’s use habit of certain websites which have some relevance to our website
What services users want us to provide
3.2 Research Findings of Quantitative Approach
The detailed figures and charts can be found in the Appendix 9. Following is the data
analysis based on the data collection.
3.2.1 Research findings on part 1: User’s general use habits of the internet
Component 1：Time spending on the internet
1). the contemporary society can be described as a network society. Internet is
embracing a bright future. More than 40% of respondents use internet more than 8
hours per day.
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Component 2：Online shopping (including seeking job) evaluation
2). More than 75% of respondents are engaged in online shopping, and around 70%
respondents are willing to using internet to find a job. These means using e-commerce
online to find a job is practical. Besides, 30 respondents use internet for job-seeking,
which means this field has a great potential.
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Component 3: How much people would like to pay for online job-seeking
3). According to pie chart 4, 69.09% of respondents spent more than 40 yuan per
month on online job-seeking services. 21.82% spent less than 10 yuan per month.
Less than 10% of respondents spent 10 to 40 yuan. These figures indicate that, the
lowest and highest amount account for more respondents, but the middle amount is
not attractive. That means, as to our basic service like membership fee, it should be at
a low price. But when it comes to the added service, we can charge at a higher price.
Because when one wants to find a job, one may will to spend more money to gain
opportunities. Nearly 70% of respondents spend more than 40 yuan last month shows
that this industry has a big profit margin.
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Component 4: The popularity of SNS evaluation
4). Around 72% of respondents are regularly searching the SNS. This shows we can
introduce the idea of SNS into our website.
3.2.2 Research findings on part 2: User’s use habit of certain websites which have
some relevance to our website
Component 1: Internet customer loyalty evaluation
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1). 72.73% of the respondents have only one WEIBO, nearly 60% only have one SNS,
and around 70% have less than 2 instant massages. These figures show that internet
users have a high loyalty to certain website once they accustomed to it.
This indicates the high possibility that we can gain the first-mover advantage as long
as we construct our website well at the beginning stage, and we should pay more
attention to the content construction and user database accumulation to construct an
online community for customers and then gain their customer loyalty.
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Component 2: Use frequency of certain website’s functions
50
2). This group of pie charts show the frequency use of functions of certain website.
This gives information to us in which functions we should focus on when building up
our own website.
Social media are usually used to self-presentation (80%), acquire information
(63.64%), follow celebrities (54.55%), connect with friends (45.46%) and make
51
professional relationships (16.36%).
This indicates that we should spend more efforts on designing personal page template,
publishing information, inviting celebrities to open personal page, designing
communication platform when constructing our website.
Component 3: People’s concern on online consumption
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3). As to online consumption, people care more about the security of website
reputation (100%), personal information (92.73%), and customer experiences,
including online customer service, visual interface design, etc (83.64%) very much.
In this aspect, we should recognize the importance of building our brand name.
Reputation is the lifelong foundation of the website. Besides, as our website is
user-generated, we need the frequent participation of our users; therefore, we should
focus on customers first.
3.2.3 Research findings on part 3: What services users want us to provide
Component 1: Customer’s demand on personal page
53
1). 47.27% of respondents strongly agreed and 36.36% agreed that a personal page is
needed to facilitate their job finding. Therefore, the functions of our website should
include personal page. Moreover, these services will be liked by most customers.
Component 2: Communication platform designing
54
2). When designing our website, platform’s function should include communicate
with professionals in art-related areas and communicate with peers to share
experiences. These two elements are all very important but among them;
communication with peers shows more popularity. This gives us direction that
platform for peer-communication deserves more efforts.
Component 3: What services customers demand
55
56
3). This group of pie charts shows what services our customers demand and their
rankings. According to these figures, our website services should contain providing
qualified internship opportunities (90.91%), providing study materials (90.91%),
providing information on professionals in the art industry (89.09%), providing spot
investigations to professional art corporations (85.45%), lectures (81.82%), and
opening personal page for professionals (78.18%) and providing training (74.54%).
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Component 4: Respondents’ considerations on finding a performing opportunity
4). According to the last two charts, when looking for a performance opportunity, our
respondents’ considerations are working content is the most important, followed by
salary, and then corporate reputation. This means we should provide qualified
internships, besides this, high salary is also very attractive for them and this factor is
our advantage because we are the only channel between the performing artists and
enterprises, without any intermediate links to take more commissions.
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4. Summary of research findings
After the qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, here comes a brief summary.
E-commerce service has high potential in mainland China; meanwhile, we should
pay more attention to innovation, professionalism, online community
construction and do more service customizations
In the traditional performing arts industry, there many intermediate links. If we
can eliminate these links, we will make profit.
More than 60% of the respondents have only one WEIBO one SNS. It means
internet users have a high loyalty to certain website, which indicates the high
possibility that we can gain the first-mover advantage as long as our website is
well constructed.
The functions of our website should include personal page design, qualified
internship opportunities, providing study materials, lectures and training, and
organizing spot investigations to professional art corporations, etc.
According to the statistic, the money respondents spend on finding jobs online is
either very low (10 yuan/month) or very high (40 yuan/month). This suggests us
that as to our basic services like membership fee, it should be set at a low price.
59
And when it comes to the added service, we can charge at a higher price.
Moreover, as 69.09% of respondents spent more than 40 yuan/month on online
job-seeking services, it means our added services have a favorable profit outlook.
5. Limitations of research findings
During the research period, we try to be objective and comprehensive, but as time and
resources restrictions, there are still some limitations.
First, the company we intend to establish is based on a totally new business model,
but the suggestions we gathered from the three focus groups are all about the existing
and past experiences. Very likely does not equal to the same. What will be like
tomorrow and whether the e-commerce will largely benefit our business is still unsure
as all are based on assumptions. Besides, though we have interviewed three focus
groups, but none of them can offer us direct experience as we are the first to do this
kind of business in this field. So all we get are indirect directions.
Second, the respondents of our questionnaire are all art students; they are part of our
potential customers, but not all. We target at all performing arts talents. However, as
most of the performing arts talents are young people and many of them may just
graduate from universities for two or three years, we believe the students’ ideas have
strong representativeness.
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PART III
BUSINESS PLAN FOR CHANNEL YONG
IN MAINLAND CHINA
61
1. Company Design
1.1 Organization Structure
Internal company has 6 divisions. They are Chief Manager, Vice-manager,
Administrative Department, Financial Department, Executive Department and
Technical Department. Chief Manager is in charge of the inner division of
Administrative and Financial Department. Vice-manager is responsible for the
Executive and Technical Department.
1.1.1 Duties of Administrative Department
Arranging daily activities and organize daily work document in the company.
Drafting development plan and strategic management
Coordinating all departments
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1.1.2 Duties of Financial Department
Preparing comprehensive annual financial plan
Making financial statement and analyzing financial statement
Establishing financial management system and regulations
Collecting financial information
Reporting company performance to managers
1.1.3 Duties of Executive Department
Operating and managing the whole network platform
Looking for business opportunities and developing potential market
Promoting products and organizing commercial activities
1.1.4 Duties of Technical Department
Maintain website daily operation
Developing new technology and new electronic product
1.2 Human resources management
1.2.1 Team Member
Our team consists of four master students in Media management from Hong Kong
63
Baptist University. Two of them have communication and journalism background.
The other two graduates from the major of financial and art management in
undergraduate study. Moreover, all our members have the experience of being student
leader and have internships in art-related organizations. All in all, the whole team
members are well-educated and specialized in different fields. More importantly, all
of them are filled with dreams and enthusiasm.
1.2.2 Human Resource Management
Human resource management is arranged by the Administrative Department at the
beginning stage of our company. It has three most important tasks: HR Recruitment,
HR Training and HR Allocation.
1.2.3 HR Recruitment
Two channels can be used to conduct HR recruitment.
One is the company website. We will put recruitment information at the bottom of the
website and open on-line application for all people. Meanwhile, our website has the
job searching service, which can be used as one way to recruit staff too.
The other is campus recruitment. We will carry out the recruitment plan of entering
into campus to attract university students. Moreover, a series of recruitment talks will
be conducted from some top universities in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
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1.2.4 HR Training
We divide human resource training into two categories. One is the employee training.
The other is the management personnel training.
1.2.4.1 Employee Training
Target staff here includes probationary employee, junior employee, intermediate
employee, senior employee.
For the probationary employees, the training is mainly focus on the job orientation,
which provides general introductions about company culture, goal, operation and
regulation. The training period is usually around 2 months.
For the junior and intermediate employees, the training is focused on skill
improvement, which provides skill enhancement and practice. The period is mainly
around 2 to 6 months.
For senior employees, business innovation is the first priority of training, which is
supplemented with management skills training. 6 to 12 months is the usual training
period.
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1.2.4.2 Management Personnel Training
The management group includes Chief Manager, Vice-manager and Chief executive
of Administrative, Financial, Executive and Technical Department.
The main goal of management personnel training is to strengthen the management
team. The training contents ranges from financial and management strategy to
specialized knowledge in this industry.
1.2.4.3 HR Allocation
At the beginning stage of our company, there are the 6 ways for human resource
allocation. They are recruitment, job rotation, probation, job bidding, bottom out and
two-way selection.
In the process of HR Allocation, the following principles should be followed.
A. Men’s capability corresponds with job requirement
B. Advantage positioning
C. Dynamic adjustment
D. Inner resource first
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2. Strategic Management
2.1 Corporate level strategy
To be differentiated with traditional performing arts companies and those common
e-commerce platforms, we prefer to use related-diversification as our corporate level
strategy.
By using related-diversification, we aim at expanding our products and services to
education and social media area on the base of performing art e-commerce. However,
both our education and social media businesses should be operated around our core
business -performing arts broker.
By providing our users with more products and services instead of job opportunities
only, we are trying to be down-to-earth in the process of assisting them in realizing
dreams. And we want to be a friend, or even a guide on their way to success.
2.1.1 Vision
A channel for the performing art talents get to close to success.
2.1.2 Mission
We provide our customers with
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1). Job/internship opportunities and training
2). A platform for communication and experience sharing.
2.1.3 Long-term objective
We base our career on Shenzhen, and radiate it to the whole country. We want to be
the cradle of young art talents’ dream.
2.1.4 Short-term objectives
The first year The second year The third year
Content
Construction
The framework of
the website. Main
function is middle
man.
Content optimizing
and upgrading.
Develop the video,
forum, training, etc.
services.
More added services
and content
adjustments according
to the users’ feedback.
Area
coverage
Shenzhen Shenzhen,
Guangzhou and other
cities in Guangdong
province.
Big cities in Shanghai,
Beijing, Tianjin and so
on.
2.2 Business level strategy
According to our corporate level strategy and all analysis before, we decide to do
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innovation in every business to make our platform attractive enough for customers.
By doing this, we aim at targeting a high-potential new market with an innovative
product.
We know that innovation is a strategy with high possible return but also high risk. As
a small company, we have a strong desire to make breakthrough and to lay a place in
today’s market. Innovation can properly fit our goal and preference.
We are making every effort to be innovative in both profit model and media contents.
Being introduced into the market as an online broker, we provide both individual and
enterprise customers with a variety of services to create win-win results. We will play
a more important and richer role in customers’ life compared with traditional job
brokers and traditional e-commerce members.
By expanding our roles, we create broad profit room with diversified profit points.
And we also encourage users to take part in our contents production process so that
we can become a public professional platform.
In the beginning period, instead of aiming at sales increasing and market share
expanding, we will pay more attention to contents construction and service
improvement. With such a goal, we choose differentiation as our major business level
strategy. This means our aim is to build up a high-quality platform which can provide
our users with premium consuming experience. By conducting differentiation, we also
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aim to form sustainable competitiveness which is hard for competitors to copy.
Our differentiation strategy will be conducted as follows:
2.2.1 Grasp and fill the market vacancy
Based on our focus group analysis, we find that in the existing Artist performances
related business areas, in some first-tier cities like Shenzhen, their operational model
is enterprise users release tasks to the advertising companies, who performance roles
as agencies, finding performing arts companies (entertainment companies) who are
willing to take over these performances, then, these companies begin searching the
appropriate unknown actors or student actors through their middlemen or
acquaintances. In this structure, there are usually more than three intermediate links,
and each will ask for a significant amount of commission. Therefore, if these links can
be eliminated properly, business opportunities appear and profits for both the
enterprise users and the unknown performing artists increase.
Channel Young will use the combination advantage of the modes of Witkey Network,
Taobao Network and Facebook, building a new business operation mode and
transaction mode in these fields with the emerging technology of e-commerce
platforms, in this platform, all the related information can be shared and trade can be
done online. In this way, by integrating and packaging all the art resources, we can
provide a more convenient way for the enterprises to find performing artists and
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stimulate and activate the huge potential part-time acting market, which will in turn
make significant profits for us.
Our obvious advantage of Channel Young is online e-commerce service; our project is
the first case to introduce this technology into this field, which means more creative
and less competition.
2.2.2 Content construction comes to the first priority of our task
In this part, we have two considerations.
Firstly, we believe contents and services are the most vital part of our company. We
decide to make our website delicate, inspiring, warm and positive. We need the
contents to build a favorable brand name. We believe contents are the core
competences, solid foundations and most intangible assets.
Secondly, because our idea is not hard to copy, focusing on content construction is the
best way to guarantee the first-mover advantage. It can satisfy our customers to the
most, and then, gain their customer loyalty, just like what Sina WEIBO did. WEIBO
itself is not difficult to copy but Sina maintained its first-mover advantage.
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2.2.3 Comprehensive promotion at a later period
Basically, the main purpose of every company is making profit. So dose Channel
Young. The efforts we put in content construction and website design are all for
attracting and keeping customers and then making more profit. Therefore, after we
had finished the large-scale content construction, we plan to shift part of our resources
to the promotion stage. That is, first guarantee the quality of our website, then,
through the comprehensive promotion to make Channel Young more widely known
and gain the scale economy.
2.3 Profit Model
Core competitive advantage: high-quality customer database and contents
2.3.1 No. one profit point: advertising
We can provide companies an integrated advertising platform. Companies which
release advertisements through our website can open their own personal homepage for
free. And we can post their recruitment messages in discount. Moreover, by shooting
training videos on our website, companies can build up their professional image
effectively. Companies who can shoot training videos on our website can do some
free advertisements on our website.
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For offline activities, companies who provide intern opportunities, who take part in
competition evaluations, and who support offline training lessons can also achieve
good effect of publicity.
2.3.2 No. two profit point: membership fee
Individuals who become our members can open personal homepage, and download
training materials. Members are divided into several levels. Higher level, more
training materials and value-added services provided.
2.3.3 No. three profit point: training
Members who occasionally need to download materials which are not contained in
their membership package can also buy those several materials. And all offline
training lessons are paying courses.
2.3.4 No. four profit point: internship
Individuals who want to take part in our internships need to pay certain amount of
charge.
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2.3.5 No. five profit point: recruitment commission
Individuals who get job opportunities through our introduction should pay us
commission according to some percent of their salary.
2.3.6 No. six profit point: value-added service
Value-added services required charge once users apply for them.
2.3.7 Profit composition plan in three development stages
In the introduction period, we mainly rely on recruitment commission and
membership fee to earn money because few advertisers will pay attention to a new
website. And our advertising fee is mainly come from companies who want to hire
people through our website. Both training and internship will account small parts
because they should still under construction at that time. Value-added service should
always take the smallest pat considering its low price.
However, we don’t plan to do brokerage business only, and we want to be a
professional media platform by adding various contents and services. In our growth
period, advertising fee is expected to grow 100% because we have accumulated a
certain amount of customers so that have built reputation to some extents. Revenues
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from both training and internship are expected to grow rapidly because we are
expected to add much more related services at that period compared with the
introduction period.
At last, advertising fee is considered to be the largest part considering its high price.
Profit composition plan in three development stages
2.4 Implementation of strategy
2.4.1 Company development stage analysis
According to the nature and industry rules, our project can be divided into 4 stages.
The first stage is about location selection, internal organization and resources and
technology preparation. The second stage is mainly focused on content construction，
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website promotion and customer accumulation. In the third stage, we put more efforts
on content innovation, added services and integrated marketing. In the last stage,
building up core competence and brand image are our main tasks.
2.4.1.1 Stage One ：Location, Organization and Resources & Technology preparation
(1). Location selection and the internal organization
Location: Shenzhen
We designed to build our company in Shenzhen for the following reasons: First, our
company founders are all students from Hong Kong Baptist University, therefore,
their relationships are all in Hong Kong. Besides, located in Shenzhen will attract
more mainland students from Hong Kong. Second, recently, Shenzhen is in a highly
development period, all the enterprises embrace a flourish future, this situation
provides more performance opportunities. Third, Shenzhen has a geographical
advantage which is close to Hong Kong, Macro and Taiwan. It can also touch every
corner of the mainland China.
Because our company is designed to build in Shenzhen, at the first stage, we decide to
treat Shenzhen as a test field and our target customers are mainly focus on Shenzhen
citizens.
Internal Organization
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Our company is composed by three kinds of stuff. One category is the founders, who
take the responsibility of promoting the implementation of the project. Another is
senior personages, who take charge of putting forward suggestions, finding solutions,
giving directions and avoiding risks. The last part is general staff, responsible for the
daily affairs.
In this start stage, training is an important segment. By training, the company can
share the background, current situation, and long-term objective with the staff. Then,
the staff can build up confidence and work together to promote the development of
our company. Training here includes two parts. The founders’ introduction of the
company and professionals’ lectures on specific operations and notes. The objective
of training is promoting stuff’s loyalty degree and enhancing the relationship among
employees.
(2). Resources and technology preparation
Resources accumulation：
A．Human resources accumulation:
Because we are a new company, everything begins from zero. Our first registered
users are mainly come from the relationship networks of our employees. Meanwhile,
our company will conduct series of lectures in higher education institutions to attract
the attention of art students and expand awareness.
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B．Enterprises resources accumulation:
At this stage, we strive to build long-term cooperation relationships with
medium-sized and small enterprises. We will implement policy of allowing more
profits to enterprises to encourage them providing more qualified opportunities. At the
same time, we will talk with the large famous enterprises to try to gain their supports.
Technology preparation：
The construction of website is the most important task. The website design process
should pay more attention to the page design, online payments and personal page
template design. After all the preparations are done well, we will have a test for our
website and make some improvements according to the feedbacks. Then, after all the
resources have uploaded for the initial stage, our website will officially start the trial
operation, followed by the company advertising online. Advertising channels include
searching engine, WEIBO, Forum and Tencent QQ, etc.
2.4.1.2 Stage Two：Content Construction，Website Promotion and Customer
Accumulation
(1). Content Construction and Website Promotion
After the preparation in the start period, our company has a relatively steady
foundation and accumulation. Then, it comes to the content construction period to
make our services optimize and perfect and guarantee the quality of services. Our
company at this stage is positioned to high-end services, not just focused on middle
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man. Our development strategy is first content, then promotion. We want content and
services to be our core competences.
Content Construction
Our company stresses that the contents and services a company provided are the
footstone of all the promotions and marketing strategies. Therefore, we aims at
offering the most perfect customer experience and various services and strives to
satisfy customers’ need by not only publishing performance opportunities, but also
uploading videos on professionals, constructing forums to share experiences, inviting
celebrities to share experiences and providing training courses. At this stage, we focus
on “quality-orientation”, which will lay a solid foundation for the following
development in brand building.
Website Promotion: Precision Marketing
Due to our limited funds and energy, we choose Precision Marketing as our promotion
method. On one hand, it saves us a large sum of money and energy. On the other,
Precision Marketing has a stronger purpose. The result should be a potential customer
would be hit by the same information again and again, which is very effective.
(2). Customer accumulation
Discover new potential customers and keep the old customers are equally important
for our company in this stage. After the advertising in campus career talks and
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customers’ personal user experiences, we believe the public will get a general concept
of our company. At this time, we decide to utilize our current customers to attract
more registers. We encourage them to invite their friends to register in our website by
providing more preferential policies. Oral spreading is a most important part in this
stage. More importantly, how to keep the customers is also our biggest task. User’s
feedbacks, forum building and new services will play important roles.
2.4.1.3 Stage three：Market expands, Content innovation, Added services and
Integrated Marketing
(1). Market expands
After the Content Construction and Precision Marketing, our company has already
and been steadily on the right track. At the third stage, our market layout is focusing
on big cities as the center and expanding to the second and third line cities to gain a
larger coverage. First, we want to expand our market to other big cities like Beijing,
Shanghai and Guangzhou. This extension mainly relies on online promotion strategy.
Meanwhile, our market also goes to the second and third line cities, like Hanghzou,
Dalian, Tianjin, etc. At this point, the strategy we used is online and offline
combination promotion.
(2). Content innovation
As to the contents, we want to be innovative and creative. Based on the content
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constructions in the previous stage, we now will to listen to our customers’ need and
requirement; we will do some adjustments to satisfy them.
(3). Added services
Also, at this stage, we have the time and energy to develop some added services. Such
as VIP service, personalized page design and price-bidding rank. By providing this
kind of service, it can make our content diversified and make more profits for us.
(4). Integrated Marketing
Up to this stage, we have accumulated some funds and experiences. Therefore, we
choose both the online and offline integrated marketing as our tool to get an overall
promotion from different dimensions. Following is a chart shows the characters of
every promotion methods.
promotion measure major contents main features beneficial result
(earnings/costs)
traditional hard
advertising
advertisements on outdoor
media and traditional
media
wide coverage,
high cost,
low focalization
★★☆
new media hard
advertising
advertisements on several
famous websites in China
wide coverage,
high cost,
high focalization
★★★
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Advertorial Advertisements in forms
of news, forum, micro
blog and blog
moderate coverage,
low cost,
high quality
requirement
★★★★★
SEO search engine optimization high technology
requirement,
low cost,
good effect,
but should be limited
in a proper degree
★★★★
cooperate with search
engine websites like
Google, Baidu
bid ranking,
keywords arrangement
high cost，
good effect,
high requirement for
keywords selection
★★★☆
online advertising
alliance
form alliance through
CPC、CPM、CPA、CPS1
and so on
moderate cost, high
requirement for
advertisers’
reputation,
★★★☆
1 CPC：cost per click, an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the
publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad is clicked.
CPM：cost per thousand impressions, often abbreviated to CPI or CPM (Cost per mille) are terms used in online
advertising and marketing related to web traffic.
CPA：cost per action, an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a
purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement.
CPS：cost per sales, an online advertisement pricing system where the publisher or website owner is paid on the
basis of the number of sales that are directly generated by an advertisement.
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uncertain effect
website cooperation sales cooperation
link cooperation
low cost,
moderate effect
★★★☆
special channel
promotion
targeted marketing in
specific occasions, for
example, marketing
materials distribution in
showing venues
moderate cost, high
focalization, good
effect
★★★★☆
personnel promotion offline agency
cooperation,
offline direct sales
high cost,
long cycle,
high risk,
high return
★★★☆
DM marketing catalog distribution High cost,
wide coverage,
high focalization,
high conversion rate
★★★☆
EDM marketing email catalog distribution low cost，
low conversion rate
★★★☆
QQ group marketing organize QQ group by
sales people
low cost,
long cycle,
high capability
requirement for
★★★★
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organizers
Others SMS high cost,
good effect
★★★☆
2.4.1.4 Stage Four: Core Competence and Brand Strategy
(1). Core competence
When our company entry this stage, we have already accumulated a large sum of and
verified customer database, and we can also guarantee the high quality of contents.
These two elements have become our core competences and foundations.
(2). Brand strategy
At this stage, nearly all the external and internal environments get well done and the
opportunity of brand building and promotion has become maturity. We will put more
effort on brand promotion.
2.5 Marketing and Sales Strategy
2.5.1 Market Mix (4 Ps)
2.5.1.1 Product
(1). Core product
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Innovation
Opportunity
Growth
Breakthrough
Sharing
In our company, innovation, opportunity, growth, breakthrough and sharing are our
core products. An innovated idea and an artistic talent will be very treasured in our
network. Meanwhile, we want to provide an opportunity platform for both individuals
and enterprises. Moreover, we advocate the ideology of sharing.
(2). On-line product
Job opportunities
Intermediary service
Career plan training
Personal self-presentation page
Social communication platform
For individual users, apart from job opportunities, we will also provide them with
diversified career plan training, intermediary service, personal show platform and
social communication platform.
Job recruitment
Advertisement
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Company own page
Social communication platform
For enterprise users, not only art talents, but also company exhibition and
advertisement can be found on our website. Moreover, specialized social
communication platform can be designed for different companies.
(3). Off-line product
Talent show
Professional speech or talk
Artistic talent competition
Off-line magazine and video
Beside online services, we will also conduct offline activities like talent show,
professional talk, artist competition and off-line magazine and video related to job
search and experience sharing.
2.5.1.2 Price
Category Membership fee for
individual customer
Brokerage
commission
Advertising fee
for enterprises
Training fee
for individual
customers
Price Common card:
10 Yuan/3 months
10% of their
monthly salary
According to
the industry
1). depends on
the fame of the
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Silver Card:
30 Yuan/3 months
Gold Card:
50 Yuan/3 months
when users get
a job
successfully
from our
website
standard lecturers or
trainers
2). Industry
standard as
references
Our main products are sold according to four categories. They are Membership fee for
individual customer, Recruitment commission for individual customer, Advertising
fee for enterprises and Training fee for individual customers.
For individual membership fee, we divide them into 3 grades. The common card is for
most of the users who just want to get some general information and services. The
price is around 10 Yuan per 3 months. The second level is the Silver Card for some of
users who need some additional service, such as space design and job
recommendation. 30 Yuan per 3 months is needed for this kind of membership. The
last type of membership card is the Gold Card for some premier services with the
price of 50 Yuan per 3 months.
For brokerage commissions, we will charge 10 percent of their monthly salary when
they get a job successfully from our service.
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For Advertising fee for enterprises and Training fee for individual customers, it is
hard to set a fixed price now. They will depend on the popularity and influence of our
company and our trainers. Basically, we will set the price according to the standard in
the same industry
2.5.1.3 Place
Products Recruitment
information
Brokerag
e service
Personalized
display
space
Communicat-
ion platform
Advertising Training
video
membership
added
service
seminar
Places
On-line services Off-line services
On-line platform Working staffs, Videos,
magazines and project
cooperation
Our products are widely distributed through different ways. For online service, job
opportunities, brokerage service, personalized display and communication space,
advertising and some packed training videos are distributed through on-line platform.
For off-line distribution, membership added services, such as face to face career help,
seminars are distributed through working staffs, videos, magazines and project
cooperation with other company.
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2.5.1.4 Promotion
Promotion Methods
On-line promotion Cooperate with popular social network
Cooperate with search engine
Advertising in China major website
Internet viral marketing through communication tools
Off-line promotion Campus advertising
Free talk
Traditional media advertising
Organizing off-line activities
Oral spreading
We will combine on-line and off-line promotion strategy together to expand company
notability and popularize our products.
For on-line promotion, we will use different ways. Firstly, Cooperating with popular
social network and search engine are the best way to popularize our platform to
youngsters in the whole China. Social network includes Renren, Sina Weibo,
Facebook, Mopper, Tianya Forum. Search engines consist of Google and Baidu.
Secondly, making Internet viral marketing through communication tools, such as QQ
and MSN, will be used as a supplement. Thirdly, posting advertisement in China
major websites, such as Sohu, Yahoo, Sina and Tencent, also can be a promotion
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method,
For off-line promotion, we will use the following methods. Firstly, we are going to
post some advertisements and do some free talk in some art colleges and universities
to attract the attention of university talents and expand notability. Second, organizing
some off-line activities, such as campus talent competition, can be a very useful way
to promotion brand name. Moreover, we can conduct some projects or recruitment
activities cooperated with some big companies. Thirdly, we will make some
advertisement in some of the Traditional Medias, such as TV and traditional
Newspaper, which have high watching rate and circulation in young generations.
Lastly, oral spreading will be accompanied with the above promotion methods. After
the advertising in campus career talks and customers’ personal user experiences, we
believe the public will get a general concept of our company. At this time, we will
utilize our current customers to attract more registers by encouraging them to invite
friends to register in our website with more preferential policies.
All in all, due to the early stage of our company and limited funds and energy, we will
mainly use the precision strategy in choosing promotion method. Our promotion goal
is to attract more and more youngsters who have artistic talents and dreams to come to
our platform and enjoy our service. Meanwhile, we also hope to do more businesses
with wide-range enterprises in order to expand company influence.
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2.6 Risk Management Strategies
The essence of risk management is antecedent management. It is kind of active
management. Putting risk management here is because one of the lifelong tasks for
every company is avoid risk. Analysis and understand the risks is the best way to
avoid it.
Following are the potential risk analysis and coping strategies
2.6.1 Capacity of the market
The number of customers is uncertain.
Avoid strategy:
(1). Use content construction and high quality service to attract customers
(2). Use Precision marketing strategy to save investment and catch the attention of the
most potential users.
(3). Use the free new media and social media, like WEIBO to get promotion.
(4). Attract new customers and keep old customers at the same time.
2.6.2 How to break the existing stable industry chain is a challenge for us.
Strategies:
We eliminate the existing links in our design which gives us a favorable profit margin.
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This leaves us a relatively large room to make prices and allows us to use low price to
attract users. After gained the first group of users, we can gain more attention through
oral communication.
2.6.3 Risk of breaking contract unilaterally
Avoid strategies:
(1). Based on our focus group interview, according to the experiences, the ratio of this
situation is less than 1%.
(2). We will also use the credit rating system to restrain the behavior of both sides.
2.6.4 Cooperation construction and Quality control over the user-generated
contents
As is described in our company design, part of our website content is uploaded or
designed by our individual users or enterprises users, such as individual’s personal
page design and enterprises’ training and internship opportunities. This part of content
is user generated. Due to these characters, the development of Channel Young is
closely related to their participation.
Strategies:
Ensure and encourage individuals’ participation: 1). Exploit more functions in the
personal page template to attract their attention. 2). Provide free advanced template if
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their participation research a certain degree. 3). Provide them some credits each time,
when the credits accumulated to a certain amount, they can use the credits to view the
charged content.
Encourage enterprises participation by two ways: 1). Make a discount on the breakage
commission fee when their tasks releases arrives a certain amount. 2). Sign the
long-term cooperation contract to ensure the content of their participation quality.
3. Financial Analysis
3.1 Financial Budget Management
3.1.1 Assumption
3.1.1.1 Income tax rate：25%
(Three years’ tax exemption due to the policy which encourages graduate students
establish their own enterprise)
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3.1.1.2 Value added tax rate：17%
3.1.1.3 There is no accounts payable because we usually use services to exchange for
services from our suppliers, who are also our customers. For example, we usually get
contents produced by our online users, and we always cooperated with companies to
conduct trainings and activities and do advertisements for them on our website in
return.
3.1.1.4 Facilities like computers have average five years for depreciation, and we
will spend another 30,000RMB to add more facilities.
3.1.1.5 Dividends won’t be distributed to shareholders in the beginning three years
so that money can be reinvested in production expansion.
3.1.1.6 Base Discount rate: 12%
3.2 Key Financial Data
Assumptions about our forecasted data:
The increase of sales revenue from the 1st year to the 2
nd year is mainly from the
increase of both individual users and enterprise users. Because one of our team
members has run a similar business at this stage in the real life, we can see our
individual customers are expected to increase from more than 2,000 in the 1st year, to
more than 5,000 in the 2nd
year. The number of company users is expected to increase
from about 50 to 100 around.
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And we regard every individual user only wants to pay the lowest membership fee,
we are expected to receive 240,000RMB sales revenue. However, considering nearly
half of these users can’t stay for the whole year, and to add some amount of
commission from enterprises, we take 100,000RMB as a proper estimation for our
sales revenue in the 1st year. In the 2
nd year, if all 2,000 individual users can stay to
use our website, we can receive at least 240,000RMB for membership fee.
Considering the increase of our individual users which should at least bring
100,000RMB sales revenue as in the 1st year, and to add revenues from the upgrade of
some old users, commission from enterprises, we can expect to earn at least
400,000RMB in the 2nd
year.
From the 3rd
year, we expect to increase the number of our individual users to almost
10,000. And after our training and internship system has been developed, we expect
more revenues should come from these two parts. Considering revenues from those
traditional pats increasing at the same amount as from the 1st year to the 2
nd year, we
can expect at least 700,000RMB sales revenue. However, in this period, we will
open more training and internship programs. The price of each program should
around 5,000RMB according to the market price. We regard 5% of our individual
users will take part in, so that we can receive 250,000RMB from these two parts. We
forecast around 25 companies will do advertisements on our website in the 3rd
year
after we have built up some reputation, our advertising revenue should be about
580,000RMB according to the average market price which is about 23,200RMB for
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about an online advertisement last for about one week.
Costs are all increasing by at least 100% from year to year because the rapid growth
of our business. Marketing cost is the most important amount and also increases at the
highest speed in all costs.
Brief Income Statement in First Three Years
Unit：10,000 RMB
Item 1st Year 2
nd Year 3
rd Year
Sales Revenue 10．00 40．00 153．00
Capital Expenditure 1．80 3．80 30．80
Marketing Cost 3．20 15．00 40．20
Management Cost 4．00 6．20 10．00
Interest 0．50 1．40 5．30
R&D Cost 1．50 3．60 6．70
Brief Income Statement in the 1st Year
Unit：10,000 RMB
Item
1st
quarter
2nd
quarter
3rd
quarter
4th
quarter
5th
quarter
Sales Revenue 1．20 1．40 2．20 5．20 10．00
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Capital
Expenditure
1．10 0．30 0．20 0．20 1．80
Marketing Cost 0．60 0．80 0．90 0．90 3．20
Management
Cost
0．20 0．90 1．30 1．60 4．00
Financial Cost 0．08 0．11 0．15 0．16 0．50
R&D Cost 0．60 0．40 0．30 0．20 1．50
As a company in the media and communication industry, most of our spending are
marketing cost, so the marketing budget is critical for our company.
Brief Marketing Budget in the first three years
Unit：10,000 RMB
Item 1st Year 2
nd Year 3
rd Year
Commission 1．00 3．00 10．30
Bonus 0．50 1．50 5．70
Channel costs. 0．20 1．50 3．00
Advertising 1．00 7．80 15．20
Public relations
charge
0．50 1．20 2.00
Total 3．20 15．00 40．20
Note：Commission accounts for 10% of sales revenue.
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3.3 Financing Plan
Forecasted Financial Data Abstract
Unit：10,000 RMB
Item Year 1st Year 2
nd Year 3
rd Year Total
Sales Revenue 10．00 40．00 153．00 203．00
Net Profit -1．00 8．00 43．30 50．30
Cash Flow 0．40 14．80 36．90 52．10
Total Assets 0．94 8．14 45．57 54．65
Financing Plan
Unit：10,000 RMB
Capital Source Amount
Equity Capital
Our own money 10.00
Venture capital 5.00
Salary
In the beginning, our company will only hire six persons including two technology
experts being in charge of website building, and two for management, two for
marketing. Salary can only guarantee their basic needs of living at the level of 44
thousand Yuan for one person in one at start. And we will add two more marketing
people every year after the 1st year.
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Budget of Fixed Assets
Unit：10,000 RMB
No. Item Amount Price(Yuan) Amount(Yuan)
1 Desk and chairs
6 500 0.30
2 Sofa
1 500 0.05
3 Tea table
1 100 0.01
4 Filing cabinet
1 200 0.02
5 Computer
4 2900 1.16
6 Printer
1 1600 0.16
7 Fax Machine
1 800 0.08
8 Consumption
Expendable Items
200 0.02
Total
1．80
In the 1st year, we need total 180,000RMB to buy fixed assets. In every year later, we
need spend 200RMB to buy consumption expendable items. With the development of
our business, we forecast to spend about 38,000 RMB in the 2nd
year to buy a
small-sized server, and to spend about 308,000 RMB in the 3rd
year to buy a
middle-sized server.
3.4 Financial Evaluation
According to assumptions in the beginning, several financial evaluations can be made
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as follows:
3.4.1 IRR
Unit：10,000 RMB
Year NCFt
Discount Rate=24% Discount Rate=28%
PVt
PVt
0 -11.4 1
1 0.4 0.8065 0.32 0.7813 0.31
2 14.80 0.6504 3.12 0.6104 2.93
3 36.90 0.5245 8.86 0.4768 8.06
NPV 0.90 -0.10
IRR=24%+｛(0.9-0)/0.9+0.1｝*(28%-24%)=27.6%
IRR > Discount Rate
3.4.2 Payback Period
Pt =1+（15.5-11）/(15.5-0.4)=1.3 Year
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3.4.3 NPV
Discount Rate= 12%
Unit：10,000 RMB
Year
i =12%
NCFt NPVt
1st Year 0．893 10．00 8．93
2nd
Year 0．797 38．00 30．29
3rd
Year 0．681 144．70 98．54
Total 192．70 137．76
NPV = 192.70-137.76=54.94 > 0
3.4.4 Rate of Return on Investment
Rate of Return on Investment
=( Average Net Profit/ Average Investment Amount）*100%
=｛（-1.00+8.00+43.20）/（1.80+3.80+30.8+3.2+15.00+40.2）｝*100%=52.9%
Considering all three financial evaluation methods above, we concluded that
our project should be considered.
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4. Exit Plan
Last but not least, we will consider our exit plan to make our business plan completed.
We have considered exit strategies under two kinds of development situations:
business recession and business maturity and have put forward different exit
proposals separately.
4.1 Exit strategies on business recession
As the business going to recession, yields and load factors are rapidly worsening. We
are going to take the following measures.
4.1.1 Go Public
Going public means to be a public company and obtains the majority of its stock.
Because main board and the GEM Listing Committee of the Stock Exchange of Hong
Kong will receive the holding company listed, we will choose to list in the Stock
Exchange of Hong Kong after introducing the risk investments. We only need about
RMB 50k venture capital investment. Therefore, the venture investment company
holds 30% of the shares. For shareholders in management group, they can sell the
shares of the companies after 12 months of lock-ups.
102
4.1.2 Management Buy-out
As managers, we are familiar with our company. In order to avoid the company fell
into the hands of others, we choose MBO approach. The purpose of the MBO may be
regarded as changing the entrepreneurial framework and controlling right. It’s not
difficult to do MBO for us because we only RMB 50k venture capital investment.
4.1.3 Business Transformation
When we choose the exit strategy of business transformation, we may cut the online
business and turn into traditional performance company because of poor operation.
We could get a large number of individual users and company users from early
operation. Besides, we are going to develop all kinds of off-line products
accompanied with some online service, which can be used as resource for business
transformation. Therefore, all these aspects discussed above can be do us a favor in
transforming into other types of business.
4.1.4 Dissolution and Liquidation
Dissolution and liquidation will be the last and worst strategy for company exit. After
the incident, the authorities will set up remedial work teams with different functions
firstly. These teams will communicate with the enterprise users about returning the
rest of advertisement fee after stopping business. Then, they will also communicate
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with the staff sincerely about the exit reasons and strategic plan. Meanwhile,
negotiating with staffs with some economic compensation is also very importance in
this part. Finally, communicating with all the stakeholders through all kinds of
medium to ensure their “right to know".
4.2 Exit strategy on business maturity—Merger
If our company going to a mature period and find out two businesses can create more
value as one company, we will choose the strategy of Merge as a ticket of to exit. If
we will leave entirely, the merger would likely call for the head of the other involved
company to stay on. If we don’t want to relinquish all involvement, we may consider
staying on in an advisory role. It may depend on the actual situation of our company
at that time.
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CONCLUSION
This report outlined the roadmap of our Master Degree final project report starting
from scratches to the completion of the whole report. The process lasted almost six
months since December 2011. The report initially started with the group discussion on
whether it should be a “Client-based” project or a “Research-based” project. Through
time to time discussion and tradeoff, we collectively decided on the topic that
developing a new business in mainland China which we thought could bring more
challenges and we would learn more during the process.
With the high-pace development of E-commerce and market vacancy of performing
art industry, our group decided to build up a new business model, e-commerce, for the
performing art industry, and to introduce a series of career guide services for our
individual users so that we can build up a business which can help others to realize
their dream. What we are pursuing is to be both creative and beneficial, to play a role
as a commercial enterprise or a commercial media but not only care about money.
Through the external environment analysis, we got a clear picture about the outside
situation, and we have realized opportunities existing in large potential demands,
technology development and policy encouragement, so that we accumulated
confidence for our project. According to the inside environment analysis, we figured
out our strengths and weaknesses and realized that to be innovative and differentiated
from competitors is the core point for us to be success. Meanwhile, from the focus
105
group interview and questionnaire analysis, we received three most important
messages: 1). Around 70% respondents are willing to using internet to find a job,
which means using e-commerce online to find a job is practical. 2). More than 60% of
the respondents have only one WEIBO and one SNS, this shows that internet users
have a high loyalty to certain website once they accustomed to it. It also indicates the
high possibility that we can gain the first-mover advantage as long as we construct our
website well. 3). 75.54% respondents hope to get some training services from our
website, which demonstrates that training service could be an add-valued and
profitable service in our business.
From all these information, we developed a business plan for establishing a new
business aiming at offering communication platforms through website for performing
arts talents in China with all kinds of services, such as job seeking and professional
training. We named our business as “Channel Young” with the objective to set up a
new channel for the performing art talents get to close to success.
From the operational side, we created an all-rounded structure for daily operation and
some strategies for Human Resource management, Strategic management, Risk
Management and also Exit management. All those strategies could help the company
operating more smoothly and steadily.
In conclusion, after 6 months of study and research, our group is very confident and
106
positive in running this business in Mainland China. We think it is a promising
business under our proposed strategies and managements.
107
REFERENCES
Blackwell, Edward. (2011). How to prepare a business plan. London; Philadelphia.
Finch, Brian. (2010). How to write a business plan. London; Philadelphia.
Boston, Mass. (2011). Harvard business review on rebuilding your business model.
Harvard Business Review Press.
David, Fred R Boston. (2011) Strategic management: concepts and cases. Prentice
Hall.
Marney, John-Paul Oxford. (2011) Corporate finance for business. New York, Oxford
University Press.
Mooradian, Todd ABoston, MA. (2012) Strategic marketing. Pearson.
Dess, G.G., Lumpkin, G.T. and Eisner, A.B. (2010) Strategic Management: Text and
Cases. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
The role of switching barriers in the online service recovery process, Holloway,
Elizabeth (Betsy) Bugg, Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-05, Section:
A, page: 1759, Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Alabama, 2003
China Statistical Year Book 2010 [Online] Available at
<http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2011/indexch.htm>[21st, March, 2012]
108
APPENDIXES
Appendix 1: Release of recruitment demand
109
Appendix 2: Personalized display platform
110
Appendix 3: Communication platform
111
Appendix 4: Career training
112
113
Appendix 5: Advertising
114
Appendix 6: Price bidding rank
115
Appendix 7: Focus Group Interviews Details
1. Interviews about e-commerce
No. One：Zhang Guowei, national video director, SINA.COM
Question 1: Can you talk about your expectation for the development of
e-commerce in mainland China?
First of all, no one doubts that the market is huge potential in recent years. Until now,
we have more than five thousand million internet users, and the market size is still
expanding rapidly. Our e-commerce sales are increasing at a speed around 25%~30%
in the past few years. Maybe the speed will decrease after a period. However, most
people in this industry believe that we are still in a expanding period in next five years.
Compared with developed countries, the internet penetration rate in China is not high.
And the consuming habit of Chinese people is changing. The new generation of the
1980s is gradually growing into a group with strong consuming power.
The prosperity of the domestic e-commerce has also benefited from the support of
national policy. The feature of low cost but high efficiency of e-commerce can meet
the need of economic restructuring in the future very well. Mentioned in the “12th
five-year development guidance” which was released by the Commerce Department,
more than 80% of above middle-sized companies in China will use e-commerce。
Another political file named “China's national economy and social development in the
12th Five-Year Plan” encourages middle or small-sized companies in China to use
e-commerce. China’s Premier Wen Jiabao emphasized the construction of various new
116
service formats like e-commerce and online shopping.
Moreover, a special fund will be set in the 12th
five years plan to provide financial
support for e-commerce research and innovation and SME e-commerce application.
So your business project is promising to receive financial support from policy.
Question 2: In your opinion, what are the major problems of China’s
e-commerce and what’s the possible breakthrough?
If you have the habit of online shopping, you can notice the fierce price war among
online shopping platforms like Taobao, VANCL and Pat. The only result of goods
homogenization is the shrinking living space in the market.
In addition, the three major problems including credit, payment and logistics which
are described as three large mountains are always there. Scale and brand monopoly is
another problem.
Small e-commerce companies can only get competitiveness by building up their own
characteristics and guarantee the quality of credit, payment and logistics. Direct
competition with national big website is very dangerous.
As for breakthrough, except the improvement of credit system and payment or logistic
network, I think innovations in both content and business model are important.
117
For example, comprehensive website like Sina should provide diversified e-commerce
services rely on its comprehensive platform, and it should be professional in terms of
content construction.
With the development of e-commerce service, more companies in service industry
have entered e-commerce field.
The combination of e-commerce and social media has also become a trend.
Question 3: How do you evaluate the profit potential of our project?
Your business model is in the field of e-commerce which I just mentioned before.
This part has also been paid much attention in mainland China. Generally speaking, I
think it can be expected.
According to statistics about China’s online shopping market, the market scale in
2010 was 2 billion, and it’s expected to reach 5 billion in 2011. The year on year
growth rate can reach 150%. The market scale is forecasted to reach 12.5 billion in
2012, and it’s expected to boom up in next three years. So your idea may meet the
general market trend in this respect.
Because I don’t know much about the demand situation of art talents market, I can’t
give you an accurate answer about your market prospect.
118
Question 4: What details do you think we need to pay more attention?
Like what I have mentioned before, you have to guarantee no problems in credit,
payment and logistics. As for your project, how to protect the privacy of users, how to
make your trade transparent and how to ensure the safety of your users’ money should
all be considered?
What’s more is about innovation, professionalism and localization, and try your best
to avoid competition with monopoly enterprises. You should make every effort to
build up user loyalty, so that you can increase the copy barrier after you entered the
market.
Question 5: What are the major difficulties we may have in the future?
I think you will face a lot of pressure from the start-up capital investment, the
stableness of your capital chain, the accurate marketing in your target market
segmentation, and the guarantee of your credibility. You need time to cultivate
professional staffs and to form your own relationship network. Everything you did
should be within the scope of regulation. As a small market, you have to choose
between money and high quality contents or advertisers.
Question 6: What other advices do you have on our management and
marketing?
119
In terms of management, I don’t advocate graduates to be core leaders, because
experience is crucial for you to adapt to the changing internet industry. If possible, it’s
better for you to recruit experienced people to be managers, or to recruit management
consulting companies or experts to be your consultants.
You must be very careful in the capital budget. Every dollar should make sense.
Experiment after pre-market research under small cost should be done. Be more
creative and more mutual in terms of your profit structure. Accumulate enough high
quality contents before you start your website.
For small companies, accurate marketing is necessary. You need to express
appropriate message to proper persons in proper time and through proper channels.
You can learn from the new e-commerce model named “SOKOMO”, which means
social, local and mobile.
No. Two：He Li, Editor-in-chief, Global Business Magazine
I think you should not only care the profitability. The internal structure, the human
resource allocation should all meet the demand of your platform and contents
construction.
Because you are targeting a specific industry, you should have deep understanding
about this industry. You should work on industry information research and analysis in
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the long period. This process will cultivate your intuition, and will help you
understand your business prospect; understand the development route, trend and
direction of your company.
Youngsters are very good target market for e-commerce business, because they are
active and easy to express their own opinions. And they are growing; their occupation
and status are easy to change. To be popular with young people is important for all
public-related products. From this angle, you should hear from them, and acquire
inspiration from their problems and expectations.
Now the e-commerce has passed the channel-oriented period and entered a
consumer-oriented period. With more and more e-commerce platform emerging in the
market, the key to success has become how to be accurate, large-scale and low cost,
about how to get as much consuming demands as possible.
No. Three：Albert Cheng, regional managing director, World Gold Council Asia
Pacific
Compared with traditional stores or traditional service model, a significant difference
of e-commerce is its lack or weakness in terms of experience.
A good way to make your business model better is to do more customizations of
service.
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And according to the statistics I have, an interesting phenomenon of e-commerce is
that 7% of super-heavy spenders contribute to 40% of total online spending. So
whether your target customers are in the range of Internet heavy-user is critical for
your judgment about your profit possibility.
In your market research, I advise you to understand where is the next e-commerce
opportunity in people’s mind, who are your target customers and how big is your
market.
No. Four：Erica Pompen, vice-president, Asia Pacific digital lifestyle, TEXT100
I think your idea is promising because I have seen similar services developing like
marriage online brokers or some other online brokers. The most important problem
about this kind of business is its security, including privacy protection and
information credibility and money security.
Its logic is about problem solving, so if it can actually help people to find out more
opportunities, it will operate well.
In terms of digital marketing, I suggest you to pay more attention on community
construction, to make your uses as a whole so that you can build up relative high user
loyalty and entrance barrier. Of course, you should encourage your users to create, to
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share, because the basic function of the internet is to empower your consumers.
You should try to produce relevant, useful and interesting contents. And because you
are targeting some unknown artists, so it’s fantastic if you can enhance their social
status both in their feeling and in reality. And you should create reactions; make your
users have fun.
The sequence of your market research can be conducted as audience, channel, then
forecasting your influence and know your competition situation.
2. Interviews about Artist Agencies
No. One: YU Tao, Artist Agency in Beijing
Question 1: Hello, Mr Yu. Will you mind to give me more details about your
company?
Mr Yu: Yes. Our company is a talent agency. We provided opportunities for the art
workers, but we would not sign a contract with them. It will be the employment
company that signs a contract with them. And we have certain relationship with some
advertising and public relation companies. For them, we are their suppliers.
Question 2: Usually, how do you find these art workers like actors and models?
Mr Yu: At the beginning stage, we will go to some shows or performances to find
models, giving our name card to them. Also, we make full use of our personal
123
relationships. Then, after building up some existing brand name, we will hold some
interviews or performances shows to select models. Now, our company has already
gotten into the right track, we make everything work and have corporations with
certain advertising and PR companies. At this time, the models will find us either
come directly to our office or send their resume and photos to us via the email. We are
kind of a intermediate agency.
Question 3: What about the current type of your customers in the business end?
Mr Yu: Generally, the customers of an artist agency in the business end contain two
parts. One is direct customers, just as you can imagine, a company who need models
to perform in a show will contact us. The other is indirect customers, which include
advertising companies and PR companies. Usually, we will build long-term
cooperation relationship with these companies to become their suppliers.
Question 4: What the most basic structure of this industry?
Mr Yu: Generally, the business companies who want to hold Auto Show, or make a
Promotion Release Conference, etc, will find an intermediate company like PR
companies or the 4A companies first. Then, these companies will contact the artist
agencies, and we will help them to find the appropriate models.
On certain circumstance, some business companies will come to the artist agencies
directly. For example, BYD is our direct client.
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Usually, large companies have enough money so they want to care more the quality
and trust the 4A companies more. But some small companies care more about the cost
so they want to make full use of every dollar and may come to the artist agencies
directly.
Question 5: What if one of them (business or model) break the contract?
Mr Yu: According to our experience, this ratio is less than 1%. Because once the
contract is signed between them, them will consider about their own fame and the
long-term cooperation.
Question 6: What do you think our new business model?
Mr Yu: It is feasible. But I also want to point out some issues you should consider.
Firstly, what is your main profit come from? I can give you an example. I think you
may have heard about MOKO. It is a little similar with your company at the
beginning stage, providing a platform for the models but it is without e-commerce
services. Later, it need make more money to cover its cost. It decided to make full use
of its resources and its most valuable resources are these human resources. Then, it is
not a platform but an artist agency company like the traditional ones by "selling" the
models. Secondly, to build up company, especially like yours, the prophase
investment is large, that means you must make sure the size of your target customers.
Thirdly, the commissions you make from both sides are roughly proportional to what
kind of resources you can provide for both sides. So, you should consider how to
125
promise the quality of your resources and how to attract the qualified companies.
Lastly, though there are some problems in this existing industry structure, this
structure is relatively maturity. More importantly, the existing relationship is stable,
how to broke it and build up a new one is your considerations.
No. Two: Project manager, Shenzhen Yi Feng Enterprise Image Planning
Company Limited
Time: 14:30-15:00 25.02.2012
Background information of this company
The company is one of the biggest comprehensive culture communication companies
in Shenzhen, but artist agency is a small part of its general business. Their businesses
related to low-end artists mainly include art shows, ceremonies and fashion shows.
Generally speaking, this business section only occupied a small part of their business.
And they are also running it according to the link above.
Question 1: What’s the main service of your company?
We focus on event planning with the characteristics of creative and boutique. Also, we
are doing artist management business.
Question 2: If we want to find some Models, can you help us in a short time?
Yes, absolutely. You can give us your proposal, and we will arrange it for you very
soon.
126
Question 3: What’s the cost if we call for a model of second and third lines?
Usually, it needs 2500 yuan per person in Shenzhen market. But if you want some
non-famous part-time model, it will cost you 800 yuan per person.
Question 4: Can you tell me some of your advantages or pros?
I think we are the one of the most mature and successful company in Shenzhen event
planning field. We can provide the best service and competitive costs. And, we have
close relationship with most stars and models. We can help you invite what you want
or need.
3. Interviews about Art Students
No. One: Yan Yin Zhi, Student, East China University of Science and Technology
Queation1: Have you ever done some performances at part time?
Yes. I rely on these performances to afford my daily life. And I usually sing songs in
the club, assembly room and stadium, or in wedding ceremony, news conference for
new products promotion or car exhibition.
Question 2: Where did you get these job and what about you income?
My friends and I joined some performance companies and signed contracts with them.
If company gets a show task, they will call us. When the show had been successfully
preformed, they would pay salary to us several days later. We usually sing two to six
127
songs for each event, and would get about 200 to 400 RMB.
Question 3: What's your opinion of our company and would you like to try?
I am interested in it and I guess would like to have a try, because this website may
offer more chances for us. And I also care about what level of salary it provides. And
of course, I hope that you will not offer illegal show like eroticism.
At last, she proposed some interesting questions, such as security issues,
responsibilities problems. For example, if this business model shows a poor
performance, how to solve it? Should the company fire them immediately or not? Or
during a show, what if the stage collapsed, who will take the responsibility? Can the
models decide the details for show or the company?
No. Two: Guo Meng Qiu, Employee (Radio and Television Group of Zhejiang )
Question 1: Have you ever done some performances at part time?
I did it quite often before, but now I am doing less because I have a permanent job at
Radio and Television Group of Zhejiang. Now I only accept high-level performance
opportunities like TV shows.
Question 2: Where did you get these job and what about you income?
When I was an undergraduate, I joined in a popular music association. The company
will ask their team members or chairman of the association to give more chances to us.
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Usually, freshmen perform shows for free. But the chairman will get commissions.
Question 3: What's your opinion of our company and would you like to try?
If you can offer some chances to become a star one day, I think you will attract more
employees. And in my view, I think it is impractical. But there is a problem that the
levels of the performances are not equal. And whether the company wants to hire
freshmen or low-end actors or famous ones? So, you can classify the actors in terms
of performing skills or fame, so that the company can find their suitable actors
directly.
No. Three: GAO Di, Student, Communication University of China
Question 1: Have you ever done some performances at part time?
Never, I come from a in famous university in China and I want to be a superstar one
day.
Question 2: What's your opinion of our company and would you like to try?
Maybe I will have a try. The process of hunting a job after graduation makes me
realize that the internship opportunities during college are essential. If your project
could provide a lot of internship opportunities in famous companies, or international
performances, I think I would be appreciated. I do not care too much about the
salaries, what really matters to me is the quality of the opportunities. So if your can
provide qualified job information and knowledge resources, I think you will attract
129
more users and get more commissions. Another way is you can invite superstar or
famous professors to open pages in your website to attract more customers.
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Appendix 8: Questionnaire
We are students from Hong Kong Baptist University. We are conducting a survey, the
results of which will be used to finish a research project in partial fulfillment of the
degree of Master of Social Science in Media Management. We would like your
assistance in helping us to complete the following questionnaire. It should take about
3 to 5 minutes. There is no right or wrong answer. Please try to answer accurately and
truthfully. The results will be kept strictly confidential and the data will be used only
for academic purposes.
Thank you for your cooperation.
I General use habits of Internet
0-2 hours
(include 2)
2-4 hours
(include 4)
4-6 hours
(include 6)
6-8 hours
(include 8)
More
than 8
hours
1. How many hours do you
spend on the Internet per
day?
Strongly
Disagree
Dis-
agree Neutral Agree
Strongly
Agree
2. I often engage in on-line
shopping.
Clothing Cosmetics
Electronic
products
Services
like
job-seekin
g Others
3. What products do you usually
buy online?
0-10
(include
10)
10-20
(include
20)
20-30
(include
30)
30-40
(include
40)
More
than
40
4. If you have used job-seeking
services online, how many Yuan
have you spent during the past
month?
Strongly
Disagree
Dis-
agree Neutral Agree
Strongly
Agree
5. I regularly search the SNS.
6. I will use the internet to help
131
me find a job.
II Use habit of certain websites
1 2 3 4 Above 4
1.How many weibos do you
have?(If you have several accounts
in one website, that equals to one
weibo)
2. How many SNSs do you
have?(If you have several accounts
in one website, that equals to one
SNS).
3. How many kinds of instant
messages do you use?
Strongly
Disagree
Dis-
agree Neutral Agree
Strongly
Agree
4. I regularly use social media to
connect with my friends.
5. I use social media to acquire
information.
6. I use social media to display
information about myself.
7. I use social media to make
professional relationships.
8. I use social media to follow
celebrities.
9. Sometimes I use social media
without any purposes, just because
of habits.
10. As to online consumption, I
care about the security of my
personal information.
11. As to online consumption, I
care about the reputation of the
website.
12. As to online consumption, I
care about the customer
experiences (including online
customer service, visual interface
design, etc).
III Users requirements investigation
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Dear respondents, in this part, I would like to tell you that we intend to build a
website which services as a platform for both the corporations to release performance
tasks and students who want to find internship opportunities in art-related fields.
Following are the potential demands you may need, please view them and rate your
demand intensity from 1 to 5.
1 2 3 4 5
1. I need a personal page to facilitate me in
finding a performance opportunity.
2. I need a platform to communicate with
professionals in art-related areas.
3. I need a platform to communicate with
peers who also pursuing performance
opportunities.
4. I need your website provide more
information about professionals in the art
industry.
5. I hope art professionals can share their
experiences by opening a personal page in
your website.
6. I hope you would provide study
material in art-related fields from famous
art schools. (photocopy, video, etc)
7. I hope you would provide Artist
Agency’s training courses online.
8. I hope you would hold more lectures on
art.
9. I hope you would provide on the spot
investigations to professional art
corporations.
10. I hope you would provide more
qualified internship opportunities in
famous art corporations.
Corporate
reputation Salary
Working
content
11. In your opinion, when looking for a
performance opportunity, corporate
reputation, salary, working content, which
is the most important one?
12. In your opinion, when looking for a
performance opportunity, corporate
133
reputation, salary, working content, which
is the least important one?
Personal information
Name:
School:
Major:
Email:
If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us at [email protected]
134
Questionnaire: Chinese version
调查问卷
关于在校大学生网络求职渠道的调查
您好！我们是香港浸会大学媒体管理专业的研究生。我们在做一份关于在校大学生网络求职
渠道的调研，调研结果仅供我们最后写作毕业论文所用。我们需要并感谢您的帮助。回答问
卷大约会占用您3到5分钟的时间。您的回答没有正确与错误之分，只有您的真实意愿是最重
要的，我们将对您的回答严格保密。
谢谢您的合作！
一、网络使用习惯调查
0-2
（含2）
2-4
（含4）
4-6
（含6）
6-8
（含8）
8
以上
1.在过去一周内，您平均每天花多少个小时上
网？
完全
不同意 不同意 中立 同意
完全
同意
2.我经常在网上购物。
衣物 化妆品
电子
产品
服务
（例如找
工作等） 其他
3.您通常上网购买何种商品？
0-10元
（含10）
10-20元
（含20）
20-30元
（含30）
30-40元
（含40）
40元
以上
4.如果您曾经利用网络找过工作，你平均一个
月为此花费多少？
完全
不同意 不同意 中立 同意
完全
同意
5.我经常使用社交网站。
6.我会借助网络找工作
二、网站使用偏好调查
1 2 3 4 大于4
1.您有几个微博？（在同一家网站（如新浪）有
多个账号的，只算一个微博）
2.您有几个 SNS？（在同一家网站（如人人网）
有多个账号的，只算一个 SNS）
3.您有最常使用几种即时通讯工具(如 QQ,
MSN)？
完全
不同意 不同意 中立 同意
完全
同意
135
4.我使用社交网站联系朋友
5.我使用社交网站获取资讯
6.我使用社交网站展示自我
7.我使用社交网站拓展人脉
8.我使用社交网站关注我喜爱的名人
9.我有时使用社交网站没有特定目的，仅出于习
惯
10.网上消费时我看重价格
11.网上消费时我看重个人隐私保护
12.网上消费时我看重网站信誉
13.网上消费时我看重个人用户体验（例如：网
速、界面设计、支付的便利性、客服等）
三、用户需求调查
您好！在这一部分，先向您介绍我们拟建立的以提供演艺兼职工作为目的的网站。这个网站
旨在建立一个企业和个人直接沟通的平台。企业直接在网站上发布任务，个人在网站上建立
自己的主页以展示才能，双方信息互通。
以下内容为您可能需要本网站为您提供的服务，请根据自己的实际情况为可能的需求度打
分。（分数越高，需求度越高）
1 2 3 4 5
1.我需要个人主页来帮助我展示才能，寻找演出机会
2我需要一个和业内人士交流的平台
3.我需要一个和结交志同道合的朋友交流的平台
4.我希望网站能提供更多关于演艺界专业人士的信
息，让我更多的认识和了解他们
5.我希望演艺界专业人士在网站上开通个人主页来
分享更多从业经验
6. 我希望网站可以提供知名高校与演艺相关的专业
课程辅导资料
7. 我希望网站提供著名演艺公司的培训课程资料
8. 我希望在网站上可以听到更多的与演艺事业相关
的讲座
9. 我希望得到去演艺公司做实地考察的机会
10. 我希望得到更高水平的、大型公司的演艺演出实
习机会
知名度 报酬 工作内容
11.在您看来，选择实习机会的过程中，公司知名度、
相关报酬（薪金）、工作内容，这三个因素那个最重
要？
12. 在您看来，选择实习机会的过程中，公司知名度、
136
相关报酬（薪金）、工作内容，这三个因素那个最不
重要？
个人信息
姓名：
院校：
专业：
E-mail：
再次感谢您的作答，感谢您对我们研究项目的支持!
如有任何问题、意见或建议，请联系：
郭 雨： （852）54293916
黎 藜： （852）69358248
马雪薇： （852）60663804
胡明月： （852）54949310
137
Appendix 9: Data of the questionnaire
I General use habits of Internet
0-2 hours
(include 2)
2-4 hours
(include 4)
4-6 hours
(include 6)
6-8 hours
(include 8)
More than 8
hours
2. How many hours do you
spend on the Internet per
day? 4 28 44 48 96
1.82% 12.73% 20% 21.82% 43.64
Strongly
Disagree
Dis-
agree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
2. I often engage in on-line
shopping. 0 16 32 104 68
0 7.27% 14.55% 47.27% 30.91%
138
Clothing Cosmetics
Electronic
products
Services
like
job-seeking Others
3. What products do you usually
buy online? 220 120 50 30 104
0-10
(include
10)
10-20
(include
20)
20-30
(include
30)
30-40
(include 40)
More than
40
4. If you have used job-seeking
services online, how many Yuan
have you spent during the past
month? 48 8 0 12 152
21.82% 3.64% 0 5.45% 69.09%
139
Strongly
Disagree
Dis-
agree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
5. I regularly search the SNS. 12 8 40 76 84
5.45% 3.64% 18.18% 34.55% 38.18%
6. I will use the internet to help
me find a job. 8 12 44 96 60
3.64% 5.45% 20.00% 43.64% 27.27%
140
II Use habit of certain websites
1 2 3 4 Above 4
1.How many weibos do you
have?(If you have several accounts
in one website, that equals to one
weibo) 160 60 0 0 0
72.73% 27.27% 0 0 0
141
2. How many SNSs do you
have?(If you have several accounts
in one website, that equals to one
SNS). 128 40 0 0 52
58.18% 18.18% 0 0 23.64%
3. How many kinds of instant
messages do you use? 68 84 40 12 16
30.91% 38.18% 18.18% 5.45% 7.27%
Strongly
Disagree
Dis-
agree Neutral Agree
Strongly
Agree
142
4. I regularly use social media to
connect with my friends. 24 48 48 76 24
10.91% 21.82% 21.82% 34.55% 10.91%
5. I use social media to acquire
information. 16 32 32 88 52
7.27% 14.55% 14.55% 40.00% 23.64%
6. I use social media to display
information about myself. 8 16 20 98 78
143
3.64% 7.27% 9.09% 44.55% 35.45%
7. I use social media to make
professional relationships. 0 72 112 12 24
0.00% 32.73% 50.91% 5.45% 10.91%
8. I use social media to follow
celebrities. 0 24 76 88 32
144
0.00% 10.91% 34.55% 40.00% 14.55%
9. Sometimes I use social media
without any purposes, just because
of habits. 16 12 88 72 32
7.27% 5.45% 40.00% 32.73% 14.55%
145
10. As to online consumption, I
care about the security of my
personal information. 0 0 16 120 84
0 0 7.27% 54.55% 38.18%
11. As to online consumption, I
care about the reputation of the
website. 0 0 0 108 112
0 0 0 49.09% 50.91%
146
12. As to online consumption, I
care about the customer
experiences (including online
customer service, visual interface
design, etc). 0 0 36 120 64
0.00% 0.00% 16.36% 54.55% 29.09%
III Users requirements investigation
Dear respondents, in this part, I would like to tell you that we intend to build a
website which services as a platform for both the corporations to release performance
tasks and students who want to find internship opportunities in art-related fields.
Following are the potential demands you may need, please view them and rate your
demand intensity from 1 to 5.
1 2 3 4 5
1. I need a personal page to facilitate
me in finding a performance
opportunity. 0 8 28 80 104
0 3.64% 12.73% 36.36% 47.27%
147
2. I need a platform to communicate
with professionals in art-related areas. 0 0 36 100 84
0 0 16.36% 45.45% 38.18%
3. I need a platform to communicate
with peers who also pursuing
performance opportunities. 0 0 20 80 120
0.00% 0.00% 9.09% 36.36% 54.55%
148
4. I need your website provide more
information about professionals in the
art industry. 0 0 24 68 128
0 0 10.91% 30.91% 58.18%
5. I hope art professionals can share
their experiences by opening a
personal page in your website. 12 20 16 60 112
149
5.45% 9.09% 7.27% 27.27% 50.91%
6. I hope you would provide study
material in art-related fields from
famous art schools. (photocopy, video,
etc) 4 8 12 80 120
1.82% 3.64% 5.45% 36.36% 54.55%
7. I hope you would provide Artist
Agency’s training courses online. 8 12 36 80 84
3.64% 5.45% 16.36% 36.36% 38.18%
150
8. I hope you would hold more
lectures on art. 0 20 20 60 120
0 9.09% 9.09% 27.27% 54.55%
9. I hope you would provide on the
spot investigations to professional art
corporations. 0 0 32 84 104
151
0 0 14.55% 38.18% 47.27%
10. I hope you would provide more
qualified internship opportunities in
famous art corporations. 0 0 20 20 180
0 0 9.09% 9.09% 81.82%
Corporate
reputation Salary Working content
11. In your opinion, when looking for
a performance opportunity, corporate 40 50 130
152
reputation, salary, working content,
which is the most important one?
18.18% 22.73% 59.09%
12. In your opinion, when looking for
a performance opportunity, corporate
reputation, salary, working content,
which is the least important one? 208 12 0
94.55% 5.45% 0.00%
153
Appendix 10：Forecasted Financial Statement in the 1st three years
p.s. our financial statements are generally made according to China’s rule
Income Statement
Unit：10,000 RMB
Item 1st Year 2
nd Year 3
rd Year
Revenue 10．00 40．00 153．00
Revenue from fixed customers 0 20．00 83．00
Loss of fixed customers (10%) 0 2．00 8．30
Net Sales 10．00 38．00 144．70
Cost of Goods Sold 1．80 3．80 30．80
Tax
Gross Profit 8．20 34．20 113．90
Profit from other businesses 0
Customer default loss
Marketing & Sales Expense 3．20 15．00 40．20
Administration Expense 4．00 6．20 10．00
Interest Expense 0．50 1．40 5．30
R & D Expense 1．50 3．60 6．70
EBIT -1. 00 8.00 51.70
Income Taxes 0 0 8．50
Net Profit -1. 00 8.00 43．20
Note: As graduate students, we can enjoy a tax incentive policy that no tax in the 1st
two years, and 1/2 tax in the 3rd
year.
154
Appendix 11: Cash Flow Statement
Unit：10,000 RMB
Item 1st Year 2
nd Year 3
rd Year
Cash Flow from Operations
Net Income 10．00 38.00 144．70
Depreciation Expense 0．36 0．76 6．13
Cash Paid for Purchasing Goods 3．20 6．20 35．70
Cash Paid for Staff Salary 4．40 10．80 18．50
Cash Paid for Tax 0 0 0
Other Cash Paid for Business
Operation
3．80 8.80 36.10
Total Cash Paid for Business
Operation
11．40 25.80 90．30
Total Cash Flow from
Operations
－1. 04 12.96 60.53
Cash Flow From Investments
Capital Expenditure 3．20 7．40 37．50
Total Cash Flow from
Investments
-3．20 -7．40 -37．50
Cash Flow From Financing
Proceeds from Additional Debt 5．00 10．00 20．00
155
Total Cash Flow From
Financing
5．00 10．00 20．00
Total Cash Flow 0．76 15.56 43.03
156
Appendix 12: Balance Sheet
Unit：10,000 RMB
Item 1st Year 2
nd Year 3
rd Year
Assets
Current Assets
cash 1．20 3．50 6．20
Short-term Investment 2．40 4．20 6．30
Accounts Receivable 0 4．20 14．20
Total Current Assets 3．60 11．90 26．70
Fixed Assets
Fixed Assets 1．80 3．80 30．80
Depreciation 0．36 0．76 6．13
Net Fixed Assets 1．44 3．04 24．67
Intangible Assets
Intangible Assets 1．00 6．00 20．00
Amortization 0．20 0．60 2．00
Net Intangible Assets 0．80 5．40 18．00
Total Assets 5．84 20．34 69．37
Liabilities and Equity
Current Liabilities
157
Accounts Payable 4．40 10．80 18．50
Total Current Liabilities 4．40 10．80 18．50
Long-term Liabilities
Notes Payable(LT) 0．50 1．40 5．30
Total Long Term Liabilities 0．50 1．40 5．30
Shareholder Equity
Paid-in capital 1．94 2．94 6．00
Additional Paid-In Capital 0 0 0
Earned Surplus 0 0 0
Undistributed profits －1. 00 5．20 14．07
Total Shareholder Equity 0．94 8．14 45．57
Total Liabilities and
Shareholder Equity
5．84 20．34 69．37
158
Appendix 13：Plagiarism Declaration Form
This form must be completed, signed, dated and included with the Media
Management Project submitted to the University for marking.
Student Name: GUO Yu; HU Mingyue; LI Li; MA Xuewei
Student Number: 11407115; 11422262; 11426330; 11422424
Title of Project: Business plan of CHANNEL YOUNG
Submission Date: 5th
, May, 2012
Declaration:
I have read the relevant sections on Plagiarism provided in the Handbook for
Graduation Project and observed the standards of conduct. I am fully aware of the
consequences in the event of plagiarism.
I declare that, to the best of my knowledge, this project represents my own work and
all sources have been properly acknowledged, and the Project contains no elements of
plagiarism.
I further declare that the Project has not been previously included in a thesis,
dissertation or report submitted to this University or to any other institution for a
degree, diploma or other qualification.
Students’ Signatures: ___________________________________________
Date: ________________________________________________________
159
Appendix 14：Authorization of Library Placement
Authorization
This is to authorize the School of Communication and School of Business at Hong
Kong Baptist University to place my project entitled “Business plan of CHANNEL
YOUNG” in the HKBU library for general public reference and inspection.
Names in block letters: GUO Yu; HU Mingyue; LI Li; MA Xuewei
Students’ ID: 11407115; 11422262; 11426330; 11422424
Signatures: _______________________________________________________
Date: ____________________________________________________________
